Glossary · Orchard
Pruning
Definition
The removal of wood to shape a tree, control its size, admit light to the fruiting zone and renew bearing wood. Formative pruning builds the framework; renewal pruning maintains it.
- Subject
- Orchard
In more detail
Traditional standard orchards were pruned lightly and infrequently, largely to keep a clear stem and remove dead and crossing wood. Intensive bush orchards are pruned annually to hold the tree in its allotted space and to keep fruit in reach. Hard pruning stimulates vegetative growth, so a neglected tree cannot be corrected in one winter without provoking a mass of water shoots.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Production
Pruning
The recurring cut made on a cropping tree to keep light in the canopy, renew fruiting wood, hold the balance between growth and fruit, and take out disease and deadwood.
Production
Training and formative pruning
Building the permanent framework of a young tree in its first years — a very different problem for a standard raised clear of grazing stock than for a bush trained as a fruiting hedge.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Orchard
Spur bearer
A cultivar that carries most of its fruit on short, slow-growing shoots — spurs — on two-year-old and older wood. Spur bearers tolerate the routine winter shortening of shoots that pruning involves.
Orchard
Tip bearer
A cultivar that fruits mainly at the ends of the previous season’s shoots. Pruning a tip bearer as though it were a spur bearer removes the fruit buds and the following crop with them.
Orchard
Top working
Regrafting an established tree to a different cultivar by cutting back its main branches and grafting scions onto the stubs, keeping the existing root system and framework.
Orchard
Veteran tree
An old tree carrying the features that come with age — hollowing trunk, decaying heartwood, dead limbs, loose bark and cavities — which together make it habitat for species that live nowhere else in the orchard.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.