THE LORETTE SYSTEM OF PRUNING. 
26l 
THE LORETTE SYSTEM OF PRUNING 
(" La Taille Lorette "). 
By Herbert E. Durham, Sc.D., &c. 
President Herefordshire Association of Fruitgrowers and 
Horticulturists. 
[Read July 31, 1917; Mr. E. A. Bunyard, F.L.S., in the Chair.] 
Whilst many methods of pruning have been advocated and practised, 
there is perhaps no one which is more based on physiological and 
botanical grounds than that propounded by Monsieur Louis Lorette 
(Professeur d' Arboriculture, Chef de Pratique horticole a Tficole de 
Wagnonville), Chevalier du M6rite agricole. The set purpose is to 
evoke growth of certain dormant eyes, whose productions are apt to 
possess great fruit -bearing proclivities, rather than simply to restrain 
extension of growth for cosmetic reasons. Besides attending to the 
actual production of fruit and the maintenance of prescribed forms, 
Lorette's system has one important character, which is not so much in 
evidence in many other styles of pruning, in that the tree is made 
to bear its fruit where it is most to be desired, namely, close to the 
supporting stems. A sharp distinction is to be made between the 
supporting branch (" branche charpentiere ou charpente ") and the 
fruiting branchlet (" branche coursonne "■)*; and the fruiting branchlets 
are kept very short, so that the fruit is borne as close as possible to the 
supporting branch — at any rate closer than is possible with the classic 
" three-eye system " ('• taille trigemme ") . In this country the ordinary 
bush and dwarf standard forms are usually a complexity, wherein 
neither definite support nor fruiting systems can be distinguished. 
In Lorette's system the whole of the pruning is done during the 
period of active growth, commencing in the spring and finishing in 
September. Winter pruning is abolished, and the usual distinction of 
winter pruning for wood production and regulation, and of summer 
pruning for fruit production, also falls away ; for it is found that a 
sufficiency of wood is formed without resort to cutting in the dormant 
period of the winter months. 
In France some authors have named the system the " Taille 
courte d'ete " or " Short Summer Pruning." This, I venture to think, 
is a misnomer, as two important sections of the work are dealt with in 
the spring and the early autumn respectively ; so that the extended 
title, if indeed any is needed, should rather be " Spring-Summer- 
Autumn Pruning." Inasmuch as the operations are carried out 
* The want of recognized terms in English for parts of fruit trees makes it 
somewhat difficult to write on the subject without quoting the French equiva- 
lents, 
