[ 24 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
March, 1910 
Th e Growth of Mature Plants 
before. But these seemingly useless buds 
are Nature’s wonderful reserve, held 
back for weeks, or months, or maybe 
years, as the case may be, yet always in 
readiness to spring to the rescue when 
the plant’s normal leaf surface is taken 
away, either by accident or design. 
For this leaf surface cannot be re¬ 
duced; the leaves, which spread to the 
air and light certain substances which 
the roots have taken from the ground, 
are as necessary to the plant’s life as its 
roots, and the proportion of leaf surface 
to root surface must be maintained. 
Cut back the branches of privet to induce 
bushy growth and you will have three 
branches where one grew before 
With wonderful intelli¬ 
gence and patience they wait, 
these reserve buds, until 
injury comes to the terminal 
bud, and then they fairly leap 
into activity in their haste to 
supply the loss. The strong¬ 
est gain the lead, and keep 
it usually, and thus, the origi¬ 
nal leading stem having 
ceased its growt'h, those 
branches which spring from 
the strongest buds in their 
turn become leaders. Some¬ 
times there are several of 
these, sometimes only one. 
There is a third kind of 
bud which some trees and 
shrubs produce in great 
abundance following injury, 
and these, rising from any¬ 
where on old branches or out 
of the trunk itself, are called 
adventitious buds. They sim¬ 
ply supplement the work of 
the dormant axillary buds 
and hasten foliage renewal 
when large limbs have been sacrificed 
and there has been great loss. 
Generally speaking the most virile 
strength of any branch is nearest its tip. 
Growth proceeds at the apex, with 
branching growth usually springing from 
the axillary buds nearest the apex—the 
upper buds these are called. Removing 
the terminal bud stimulates the growth 
of these upper axillary buds — or branches 
which these may have formed—because 
the supply of nourishment to that par¬ 
ticular stem has then to be divided be¬ 
tween only two, while before it supplied 
three. It is seldom, however, that the 
removal of the terminal bud alone will 
induce further branching down a stem— 
otherwise that form of growth charac¬ 
terized as bushy — though it may some¬ 
times. The severe cutting back of privet 
in hedges is an excellent example of what 
must be done to secure dense branching 
low down on a plant, and it is also an 
excellent example of what will happen to 
a plant that is pruned to excess. 
Privet usually branches three times 
immediately below the cut. To secure 
these branches near the ground, it is 
therefore necessary to cut it first to within 
a few inches of the ground, and then to 
cut these shoots down again pretty close 
to the parent stem, and so on. This 
furnishes stocky, stiff plants—just what 
one doesn’t want in flowering shrubs, 
though it is highly desirable in a hedge. 
Removing the first pair of axillary 
buds will start the next into growth 
usually, while the removal of buds or 
small branches down along a stem will 
stimulate the growth at its apex. In this 
way a plant’s general growth may be 
directed towards a certain ideal form from 
its infancy, with never a bit of waste in 
its vitality or in the time required to 
arrive at that ideal. 
Be in no hurry to prune old shrubs, 
(Continued on page xix) 
\A 7 ITH the coming of 
* * spring a sort of prun¬ 
ing madness gets into the 
blood, a mania to trim and 
cut and “ tidy up ’ ’—and then 
to go on trimming under the 
impetus of a blind super¬ 
stition that in some myste¬ 
rious way it is good for 
vegetation to be mutilated. 
And the defenseless beginner 
is egged on by countless 
“ hints” in every bit of gar¬ 
den literature that comes to 
his hand and tempted by the 
pages of nursery and tool 
supply catalogues which are 
fairly g o r y—I should say 
sappy — with the illustrations 
of countless amputation im¬ 
plements, until at last resist¬ 
ance ceases; armed with the 
hints and the tools he sallies 
forth—and great is the slaugh¬ 
ter of that day! 
While there is yet time, be 
induced to hide the pruning 
shears, or their enticing likeness in the 
sales books, from yourself and give 
attention this month to the fashion 
of a plant’s growth. Sound knowl¬ 
edge of this should precede the cut¬ 
ting of even the smallest twig, just as 
sound knowledge of anatomy must pre¬ 
cede the successful surgeon’s work on 
human subjects. There is nothing to 
prune until a plant has grown—and not 
a great deal then, if its growth has been 
intelligently directed and assisted. 
We are accustomed to think and 
speak of buds as embryonic flowers, but 
they are a great deal more than that. 
There are flower buds, leaf buds and 
mixed buds—that is flower - and - leaf 
buds—and every branch and limb of the 
sturdiest tree, indeed even the tree itself, 
has had its beginning in a bud. They are 
the source of all growth after a plant is 
out of the seed. 
The tiny plant springs from the seed, 
broadly speaking, by means of its terminal 
bud, and each year its growth proceeds 
upward by the formation of another 
terminal bud during the summer, which 
crowns its season’s work and opens the 
succeeding year into leaves, possibly 
flowers and a further growth of stem. 
On either side of this main stem, at 
regular intervals usually, lateral buds are 
formed from which in due season, 
branches develop. As these commonly 
rise between the leaf stalks and the main 
stem — that is in the axils of the leaves — 
they are called axillary buds. They are 
however the terminal buds of the branches 
of course; so growth is always carried on, 
strictly speaking, by a terminal bud. 
This leaves a lot of useless buds along 
every stem apparently, for a very small 
percentage develop and grow into shoots 
and of those that do, many die quickly, 
choked out in one way or another—else 
there would be as many branches one 
season as there had been leaves the season 
