Marc'll 13, 1881. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
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PRUNING ROSES. 
lldlir OTWITHSTANDING all that has been written 
g. jww nn on the danger of early priming, a great number 
tm f of persons can with difficulty refrain from 
applying the knife or secateurs to their rapidly 
1 ~~ ' growing plants. They are alarmed lest their 
Roses should be exhausted by the removal of 
such masses of green shoots and foliage as late 
pruning involves in such an early season as we 
are now experiencing. This is an important 
matter, and appears deserving of fuller consideration and 
examination than it has received at the present time. 
“ D., Deal," has more than once adduced examples of 
Roses not being weakened by the removal of long shoots 
studded with fresh growths and expanded foliage, and has 
shown that plants thus treated have afterwards grown in the 
most satisfactory manner and developed magnificent blooms 
in time for exhibiting. A week ago, in the small rosery 
of Mr. Crowley at Waddon House, Croydon, where the beds 
are in a very sheltered position, the plants were a thicket of 
green growths, not a few of the shoots being 4 or 5 inches 
long, and in some the buds could be felt in the tips. To 
cut off such a mass of vegetation timid persons would regard 
as a cruel process, on the ground that it must seriously 
weaken the plants. It may exhaust the soil, no doubt, 
to some extent; but, granting that there is sufficient food 
left in it, are the Roses really weakened at all ? The 
excellent gardener at Waddon has passed the epoch of 
timidity in the history of Rose-pruning, and now looks 
on the plants and their future blooming with equanimity. 
I passed the same epoch ten years ago. The Roses at 
Waddon were similarly forward when pruned at the end of 
March last year, and if they were weakened thereby how 
are we to account for the luxuriant growths that followed, 
and which now, in turn, await the severe shortening that 
they will soon have to endure? The result will be the 
same as last year—free and strong growths and handsome 
blooms in June, unless some extraordinary late frost should 
occur to injure the shoots. It is to avoid such possible 
njury that the pruning of Roses is deterred, and the growth 
of the bloom-producing shoots retarded. The earlier pruning 
is done the earlier are the growths that must be relied on for 
fl owering, and consequently the greater is their danger of 
b eing destroyed or seriously damaged. The later the pruning 
is done in reason, say in March, the greater is the liability 
of the plants to escape the danger indicated; in fact, the 
1 onger the buds at the base of the shoots can be kept dormant, 
yet remain bold and healthy, the safer will the aftergrowths 
be, and the greater the certainty of free unchecked growth 
during May and June. 
But to the question of weakening. Experience suggests 
to me that Roses are not weakened by the removal of 
the growths under notice. It is to be remembered that a 
plant consists of roots as well as of stems and foliage. Strong 
branches indicate a vigorous tree, but it can only be made 
so by the free action of vigorous roots in fertile soil. If the 
strength of the roots is greater than that of the branches 
No. 194.— Yol, VIII,, Thikd Sekies, 
the force of the sap will be so great that robust growth 
must follow; while if the balance is on the other side, the 
roots being the weaker part, the growth of the tree will be 
restricted. This is very apparent in the growth of Roses. 
If not pruned at all the growth will soon cease to be strong, 
and the blooms of necessity will be correspondingly small; 
but prune severely to bold buds on healthy growth, and the 
root-power will be concentrated on the few buds retained, 
and the resulting growths must be correspondingly vigorous, 
always assuming the soil is fertile. 
Admitting the fact, for fact it is, that the greater the 
preponderance of root power over the strength of the 
branches the stronger the growth must be, we must also, 
I think, admit another thing, that the root-action of a 
Rose is very much greater at the middle of March, or 
after the branches bristle with healthy growths, than was 
the case a month or more earlier, or before the buds 
had started, or, at any rate, before any leaves had com¬ 
menced unfolding. The growths now produced, and which, 
it is feared, must weaken the plants, have, more probably, 
a contrary effect, inasmuch as they have undoubtedly in¬ 
creased the roots, and these working in good soil must 
inevitably exert such force on the few buds to which the 
branches are reduced, that the resulting growth must be 
both quicker and stronger than if the root power were 
weaker. But does not the removal of such a mass of growths 
check the roots that have been summoned into activity ? It 
may do so to a slight extent, but experiments conducted 
with Roses in pots for testing that point have not shown that 
the roots really suffer; they only rest for a few days, then 
go on as if refreshed by their temporary inactivity. 
Whatever loss there is by deferring the pruning of 
Roses until after they have commenced growing freely, 
is the loss of a certain amount of nutriment from the 
soil; but if this loss is a gain to the Roses, and the 
saving of the food in the soil a loss to them (by their 
being cut by frost and unable to appropriate it), then the 
advantages appear to rest on the side of late pruning, 
regardless of the extent of the growth of the plants. 
On page 186 last week, “ A. M. B.” wrote in favour of 
early pruning, and adduced as an instance of its safety suc¬ 
cessful results notwithstanding the severity of the weather 
immediately after the plants were pruned. Fortunately the 
inclement weather followed the pruning so quickly that there 
was not time for any growth to be made ; but supposing the 
frost had occurred a fortnight or three weeks later, as it is 
quite as likely to do as not in March, the young growths 
must have been damaged. Under the circumstances the 
Roses in question appear to have had a lucky escape. 
The chief object of these notes, however, is not to insist on 
any particular date as the best for pruning Roses—as this 
can only be rightly determined by individual cultivators who 
know the local climatic peculiarities which cannot be safely 
ignored—but as an endeavour to dissipate the fears of those 
individuals who are anxious to delay the pruning as long as 
possible, in the hope that the growths on which they must 
rely for the coveted blooms will escape the frosts of April and 
early May that are often so disastrous, but who yet are 
haunted with an uncomfortable feeling that their plants are 
being exhausted by the growth that is now so prominent, 
and which every day increases to an apparently dangerous 
extent. They would be exhausted, no doubt, if the growths 
were allowed to extend indefinitely—that is, if the Roses 
were not pruned at all; but pruned in the ordinary manner 
a strengthening rather than a weakening of the plants occurs. 
The long shoots that are removed amount very much to a 
question of removing ninety out of a hundred sheep from a 
pasture, leaving all the more food for the ten remaining, 
which have the correspondingly better chance to “ eat and 
get fat,” and proverbially farmers like fat sheep, and 
rosarians fat blooms. 
All the food taken out of the soil by the removal of the 
No. 1850.— Yol, LXX., Old Series. 
