ON THE PRUNING OF EOSES. 



445 



3. To shorten back the shoots, so as to concentrate the sap in certain 

 of the eyes at their bases, so that these eyes may be able to produce 

 flower-bearing branches. 



4. To replace every year the branches that have flowered by young 

 branches to flower in their turn. We know that the blossom is produced 

 on the current year's shoot ; it is necessary therefore to assist the develop- 

 ment of these shoots by the removal of those that have flowered. 



5. To evenly distribute the sap by giving to the branches a suitable 

 direction and even height, so that they may all be equally strong and 

 floriferous, and that it may be possible to enjoy their blossoms from a 

 single point of view. 



6. To increase the number of the branches ; for if one prunes a 

 branch, one is sure to obtain, below the part pruned away, two or three 

 shoots, which will form as many branches, of the height and in the 

 positions required. 



Monsieur E. Forney also lays down the following axioms, which every 

 Rose-pruner ought to take to heart : — 



" 1. We give vigour to a branch by pruning it hard, if all the other 

 branches are cut equally short. It is evident that the concentration of 

 the sap will cause all the branches to develop with equal vigour. 



" 2. We weaken a branch by pruning it hard if the other branches are 

 left long. The sap flows by preference through the long branches, and 

 leaves the short one in a state of marked inferiority. 



" 3. We give vigour to a branch by leaving it long if all the other 

 branches are pruned short. The long branch dominates the others ; and 

 being higher and furnished with a larger number of eyes, it attracts to 

 itself all the sap. 



" 4. We weaken a branch by leaving it long, if all the other branches 

 are pruned equally long. The branches are too much extended for the 

 roots to be able to furnish them with a sufficient quantity of sap ; they 

 mutually weaken each other and grow with less vigour." 



It would take a long time to adequately discuss Monsieur Forney's 

 fourth axiom. If pruning weakens all the growths concerned, one asks 

 oneself how one can weaken a branch by pruning it long, if all the others 

 are left long also. The two propositions are altogether contradictory. 



Monsieur Eugene Forney's book, as also that of Verlot, is unfortu- 

 nately in some respects obsolete. Since their publication a revolution 

 has taken place in Rose-growing. The Rose on its own roots has been 

 replaced, for the most part by plants budded at the ground level ; new 

 varieties, as well as new species, have taken the places of the old ones ; 

 the South has "moved on " and the North has seen its growth of out-door 

 Roses diminished, and its cultivation under glass considerably lessened, 

 and this revolution from North to South, which Forney could not have 

 foreseen in 1864, has introduced certain modifications into the manner of 

 pruning ; but, in spite of this, the precepts given by this able professor, 

 based on the physiology of the plant, may for the most part be always 

 taken as a theoretical basis in pruning. 



