PRUNING FOREST TREES This is a practice that belongs to intensive forestry. It is a part of a type of silviculture that crops land with trees as the careful farmer does with grain. If a dense stand does not "clean itself" of lower limbs by Nature's pruning, there is cheap labour to do the work, and sale for the limbs as fagots, or as charcoal. Thus in various European forests it pays to prune trees. In America it rarely pays yet. The illustration of pruning white-pine seedlings in small woodlots (see page 477) is a notable exception.
White pine does not clean itself of branches, even dead ones, as most trees do. This fact greatly impairs the quality of the timber, for dead knots abound in it. Only trees intended for a mature first-grade crop can be pruned with profit.
Judicious selective cuttings which keep the forest cover intact bring about natural pruning by the choking out and chafing of lower limbs.