Slay 9,1839. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
371 
or espaliers several feet, whilst no system of training or order of 
training is visible ; there is only a certain cutting away of the 
annual growths and a certain amount of tying up of the branches, 
mostly determined by the breakage of ligature. These are extreme 
cases, but it is common engugh in gardens to see fruit trees making 
abundance of wood, which is shorn off sooner or later, and with it 
the prospect of fruit. Occasionally trees once symmetrical are 
left unattended ; they might just as well be left as orchard trees 
usually are, to Nature ; they would then form fruit buds, and in a 
favourable season produce fruit, but it is not of the size and 
quality expected of trees against walls or even as espaliers, as the 
means employed and skilled culture are expected to suggest some¬ 
thing better than orchard fruit. 
The means usually adopted, or at least suggested, to remedy 
sterility in fruit trees is root-pruning. The roots, it is alleged, are 
strong and deep, therefore afford crude material too abundantly 
and until a late period of the season, consequently the growths are 
sappy, long-jointed, and luxuriant. To attribute defect of crop to 
over-supplies of aliment, to blame the roots when the trees are 
healthy, is strange reasoning, inasmuch as it ignores the facts that 
if the roots are strong the soil is too rich and loose, and if the roots 
are deep it is in consequence of the culture pursued. Root-pruning 
may be a necessity of the dwarfing or restrictive mode of culture, 
but because a tree grows too luxuriantly for cropping it is absurd to 
attach blame solely to the roots. What of the heads ? Are they 
allowed to make grow r th proportionate to the roots ? Breastwood 
shoots of a foot or more in length are stopped to a few joints of 
growth ; three leaves are retained to do the work Nature or Art has 
prepared for a dozen or more. This is not only so as regards the 
sboot but of the branch. A branch of a fan or horizontally trained 
tree in a length of 10 or 12 feet generally has more growth cut 
away than is retained throughout the tree, for beyond the few 
joints of growth reserved at the base of each shoot all the other, 
except the extremity of trees extending, are cut away. The food 
supply is in excess of the power of elaboration—quite 75 per cent, 
of the new parts prompted by the supply of nutriment are prevented 
performing their functions through the adherence to established 
practice. It is very well to point to root-pruning as a panacea 
of the non-fertility of fruit trees through excess of nutrition, at 
the same time ignoring the fact of a similar example without 
manipulation except thinning cross branches and shortening or 
removal of irregularities as singularly productive as the other is 
sterile. Why should root-pruning be necessary for the wall and 
espalier tree, and not for the standard ? In the first there is 
restriction of a twofold order—viz., laterally and longitudinally, 
also vertically. There is the difference in the first that all the shoots 
which should form spurs and fruit buds are cut away, whilst in the 
second the shoots are retained, and ultimately become fruitful. 
Give the first ample space, and it will be as remarkable for fertility 
as it was when confined for sterility, and this without recourse to 
ffoot-pruning. 
To be brief, root-pruning is an inculcation of restrictive culture 
—an error in not proportioning the rooting area to the space 
allotted to the spread of branches ; in other words, fruit tree 
borders are made too wide, too deep, and too rich, hence the exube¬ 
rance necessitating lifting and root-pruning. But I am in doubt as 
to root-pruning being a true or natural principle. If the trees are 
healthy reliance may be placed on the suitability of the rooting 
medium, and instead of pointing to faults there and initiating root- 
pruning the weight of evidence is against the practice pursued to 
restore the reciprocal action of the roots with the branches, which no 
system of root-pruning, unless periodically practised, satisfactorily 
effects. It is at best a recourse to expedients, which ow r e their 
efficacy to their recurrence. The real fault rests with the pruning, 
the restriction—the cutting away of parts which if left would 
prove productive of the most and finest fruit. 
We do not hesitate to “head back” a healthy tree of an unde¬ 
sirable variety and to regraft. We acquiesce in condemning root- 
pruning, for if ever there were need of it it is when a tree with a 
large head is cut off to give place to scions, the roots being in excess 
of the supply of food hundreds of times beyond their possible 
requirements. What becomes of the reciprocal action of the roots 
with the head in this case ? The growth of the scion is not particu¬ 
larly vigorous—the roots afford the requisite supplies of nutriment. 
What becomes of the excess? Unfruitfulness was an assumed 
cause of over-luxuriance, whereas we have a clear proof that it was 
occasioned by the production of parts for which there was not 
space, allowing parts to be made which of necessity of space must 
'be cut away. The scions hundreds of parts less in demand of 
■aliment perfect more growth than was effected in the tree before 
beading down. In the course of three years it produces fruit, and 
it goe3 on its course increasing in size and corresponding crop until 
’it reaches the limit of space, then the tree sooner or later becomes 
filled with wood, crowded with growths, and ultimately unprofitable. 
The unfruitfulness of trees is therefore mainly the result of the 
method of culture practised. 
When trees from restriction to a small space require much 
manipulation of the shoots to make them at all presentable, by 
which they become choked with stubby growths and unprofitable 
spurs, it would perhaps be advisable to try the effect of thinning 
the growths and the clusters of spurs, which will tend to greater 
concentration of the sap on the parts retained ; they will become 
stouter through the better elaboration and assimilation of the 
sap, they will store more food through the increased light and 
air, and usually form fruit buds with fruit in season. This, it may 
be urged, will increase the vigour of the trees, but such is not my 
experience when the trees are healthy, a certain indication of the 
suitability of the rooting medium ; but trees that are confirmed in 
making breastwood are not readily broken of the vexatious habit, 
yet it is well worth trial, and if once the trees can be restored to a 
fruitful state nothing short of sheer neglect of judicious treatment 
in regulation of the growths can induce sterility. Should that 
fail, however, no tree will fail in the formation of fruit buds and the 
production of profitable crops by cutting the branches away and 
training a fresh shoot in place of each the several branches. The 
tree will, equally with those grafted, live its life over again in 
renewed vigour and fruitfulness. To suggest root-pruning for such 
trees is to court failure. 
Some trees produce abundance of blossom, but no fruit. This 
usually arises from poverty. The only remedy, so far as I know, 
is to well thin the spur growths and also thin the blossoms, or 
preferably the flower buds, affording more support to the roots 
of a liquid character, with mulching to insure the regularity of 
the food supplies. There are also trees that from age and pro¬ 
longed confinement to the production of fruit on spurs become, 
with their old, bare, and attenuated spurs, useless and unprofitable. 
They are worn out. That may be so, yet I find that such very 
often are quite healthy, and only require to have the old branches 
displaced by young growths to become eminently fruitful, afford¬ 
ing as fine or finer fruit than young trees. Two years ago I took in¬ 
hand some trees that had shoots of the preceding year of consider¬ 
able length—some as breastwood 3 feet long. They had not been 
summer pruned, and they were about as unpromising as any¬ 
one could well desire for operating with iu hope of a crop in 
anything like reasonable time. I saw no indication of disease ; in 
fact, the growths were manifestly healthy, though the branches 
were mostly bare of spurs, and what there were bore a mixture of 
live and dead wood of no use as fruit producers. The trees 
are mostly fan-trained, which made it easier to cut out some of the 
old bare branches clean to the point of origination ; in fact, we cut 
out the old wood where practicable and trained in young, having 
mostly to rely on spur shoots conveniently located. In the case of 
horizontally trained trees w’e cut out some of the worst of the 
branches and trained in young shoots in their place. The young 
wood was a year old ; the growth extended considerably in the year 
of laying in, and we had in autumn spurs with fruit buds on the 
two-year-old wood, on the one-year-old wood, and we had fruit last 
year on the young wood laid in the year bef >re, and next to none 
on other parts— i.e , old spurs of the trees. Now we have a goodly 
amount of young wood, promise of more fruit this year, and increase 
as the seasons roll by. 
We have also some Plum trees under glass—a case 100 feet long. 
The trees had been closely pruned, the branches were bare of spurs, 
more dead than live ones. To lay-in young shoots was out of the 
question. It was a matter of cutting out bare branches and re¬ 
moving dead spurs. The trees were done, but from the evidence 
of the few live spurs the verdict wa3 arrived at that there was 
‘ life in the old dog yettherefore it was a question of waiting. 
Well, in 1887 shoots were made and trained in wherever space 
allowed. They were added to in 1888. The crop in those years 
was practically nil. Now (April 20th) the trees are white 
with blossom—more on one shoot than on a whole tree under 
the close spur-pruning system in 1887. I enclose a few 
growths of 1887 as an illustration of what they are in 1889. Of 
course, blossom is not fruit, but the thing is to get blossom first and 
the fruit will come. I am acting on Mark Twain’s advice —viz., 
“ It is not safe to prophesy unless you know.”— G. Abbey. 
[The examples show conclusively the advantages of the change 
in practice indicated-one shoot, 2 feet 8 inches long, containing 
forty-nine trusses of fine blossoms, which could not possibly have 
been produced if the old method of procedure had been con¬ 
tinued.] 
AURICULAS AT PITCAIRLIE. 
R. Catiicakt, Esq , of Pitcairlie, in Fifeshire, an ardent culti¬ 
vator of Auriculas, having informed me that his blooms were at 
