112 GARDENING FOR ALL. 
APRICOT.—(Prunus Avmeniaca). 
The apricot is a fruit of the plum tribe, and was intro- 
duced into England in 1548. Some consider the apricot the 
most delicate of all our hardy fruits. It is used for tarts, both 
green and ripe; it is also preserved with sugar in both these 
states, and is sometimes dried as a sweetmeat. The apricot 
is an important article of food in the North-West Himalayas ; 
and oil for lamps and cooking purposes is expressed from the 
kernels. 
The tree in this country requires to be grown against a 
warm wallin a favourable and sunny district. It does not 
bear well the extremes of heat and cold, wet and drought, to 
which it is sometimes subject with us; hence the frequency 
of the loss of branches and of unhealthy trees. 
If it is protected with a glass coping, or grown in an un- 
heated greenhouse, the tree is usually happy and prosperous, 
probably on account of the shelter it receives and the better 
maturity of the wood. 
In Worcestershire, the apricot is commonly grown against 
cottages, where it is nearly annually laden with its golden and 
delicious fruit, and paying. in scores of instances, the rent of 
the cottage for the year. The climate is genial, the soil warm, 
and not too wet and cold, as in many districts. 
The apricot fruits chiefly upon spurs and upon thoroughly 
ripened wood of moderate strength of the previous year. 
The main branches should be widely distributed over 
the wall, and the side branches laid in between at wide 
intervals. Upon these latter fruit-spurs will form, and 
these should be prevented from being too ‘close together by 
timely disbudding in the spring, when the bursting wood- 
buds on the shoots—the front part—immediately facing the 
operator ought to be removed with finger and thumb, and a 
few of the other buds on the upper and lower sides of the 
shoots, leaving the young growths about four inches apart 
alternately above and below. All buds between the shoots 
and the wall should be entirely removed Disbudding is a 
most valuable operation, and is the first and most important 
in the work of managing the growth of fruit trees. When 
this is properly carried out there is little necessity for the 
use of the knife, beyond the removal in autumn of exhausted 
