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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pruning

Prune \Prune\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Pruned; p. pr. & vb. n. Pruning.] [OE. proine, probably fr. F. provigner to lay down vine stocks for propagation; hence, probably, the meaning, to cut away superfluous shoots. See Provine.]

  1. To lop or cut off the superfluous parts, branches, or shoots of; to clear of useless material; to shape or smooth by trimming; to trim: as, to prune trees; to prune an essay.
    --Thackeray.

    Taking into consideration how they [laws] are to be pruned and reformed.
    --Bacon.

    Our delightful task To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers.
    --Milton.

  2. To cut off or cut out, as useless parts.

    Horace will our superfluous branches prune.
    --Waller.

  3. To preen; to prepare; to dress.
    --Spenser.

    His royal bird Prunes the immortal wing and cloys his beak.
    --Shak.

Pruning

Pruning \Prun"ing\, n.

  1. The act of trimming, or removing what is superfluous.

  2. (Falconry) That which is cast off by bird in pruning her feathers; leavings.
    --Beau. & Fl.

    Pruning hook, or Pruning knife, cutting instrument used in pruning trees, etc.

    Pruning shears, shears for pruning trees, vines, etc.

Wiktionary
pruning

n. 1 A removal of excess material from a tree or shrub. 2 (context countable English) Something obtained by pruning, as a twig. 3 (context computer science English) A method of enumeration that allows the cutting out of parts of a decision tree. vb. (present participle of prune English)

WordNet
pruning
  1. n. something that has been pruned off of a plant

  2. the act of trimming a plant

Wikipedia
Pruning

Pruning is a horticultural and silvicultural practice involving the selective removal of parts of a plant, such as branches, buds, or roots. Reasons to prune plants include deadwood removal, shaping (by controlling or directing growth), improving or maintaining health, reducing risk from falling branches, preparing nursery specimens for transplanting, and both harvesting and increasing the yield or quality of flowers and fruits. The practice entails targeted removal of diseased, damaged, dead, non-productive, structurally unsound, or otherwise unwanted tissue from crop and landscape plants. Specialized pruning practices may be applied to certain plants, such as roses, fruit trees, and grapevines. It is important when pruning that the tree’s limbs are kept intact, as this is what helps the tree stay upright. Different pruning techniques may be deployed on herbaceous plants than those used on perennial woody plants. Hedges, by design, are usually (but not exclusively) maintained by hedge trimming, rather than by pruning.

Arborists, orchardists, and gardeners use various garden tools and tree cutting tools designed for the purpose, such as hand pruners, loppers, or chainsaws. Additionally in forestry bush saws are commonly used and these are often attached to polls that reach up to 5-6m, this is a more efficient way of pruning than with ladders. These bush saws on polls have also been motorized as chainsaws which is even more efficient. Older technology used Billhooks, Kaiser blades and pruning knives. Although still used in some coppicing they are not used so much in commercial forestry due to the difficulty of cutting flush with the stem. Flush cuts lead to good wood, non-flush or bark damaging cuts (which are more likely with a swung blade than a sawed one) put the tree at risk of entry cords from forest pathogens.

In nature, meteorological conditions such as wind, ice and snow, and salinity can cause plants to self-prune. This natural shedding is called abscission.

In general, the smaller the branch that is cut, the easier it is for a woody plant to compartmentalize the wound and thus limit the potential for pathogen intrusion and decay. It is therefore preferable to make any necessary formative structural pruning cuts to young plants, rather than removing large, poorly placed branches from mature plants.

Pruning (decision trees)

Pruning is a technique in machine learning that reduces the size of decision trees by removing sections of the tree that provide little power to classify instances. Pruning reduces the complexity of the final classifier, and hence improves predictive accuracy by the reduction of overfitting.

Pruning (morphology)

The pruning algorithm is a technique used in digital image processing based on mathematical morphology. It is used as a complement to the skeleton and thinning algorithms to remove unwanted parasitic components. In this case 'parasitic' components refer to branches of a line which are not key to the overall shape of the line and should be removed. These components can often be created by edge detection algorithms or digitisation.

The standard pruning algorithm will remove all branches shorter than a given number of points. The algorithm starts at the end points and recursively removes a given number (n) of points from each branch. After this step it will apply dilation on the new end points with a (2N+1)(2N+1) structuring element of 1’s and will intersect the result with the original image. If a parasitic branch is shorter than four points and we run the algorithm with n = 4 the branch will be removed. The second step ensures that the main trunks of each line are not shortened by the procedure.

Pruning (disambiguation)

Pruning is the prac tice of removing unwanted portions from a plant.

Pruning may also refer to:

  • Synaptic pruning, the reformation of neural structure by pruning "excess" neurons or neural clusters
  • Pruning (decision trees), a method of simplification of a decision tree
  • The Pruning (morphology) algorithm, a technique used in digital image processing based on mathematical morphology
  • Pruning (viticulture), how pruning is used in vine training systems
  • Pruning (vascular), in prenatal development, the disappearance of blood vessels which are no longer needed
  • Pruning (microeconomics), the removal of "excess" items from a budget
  • Pruning (maceration), in dermatology, the softening, whitening, and wrinkling of skin that is soaked in water
  • Retinal vessels pruning,the disapearance of the ends of the small vessels in the area affected (as in case of retinal venous occlusion).

Usage examples of "pruning".

The grass was as close-cropped and carpet-like as some old English lawn and the trees themselves showed evidence of careful pruning to a uniform height of about fifteen feet from the ground, so that as one turned his glance in any direction the forest had the appearance at a little distance of a vast, high-ceiled chamber.

Strict measures against disorder, a powerful armed force, even a pruning of the oligarchic class and the dispensing of their territories to the poor.

Sometimes, as if from long-standing habit, he would take his sharp, heavy sheers out of his overcoat pocket and painstakingly, without asking any money, set to work in the yard in front of the main building, trimming the thuja bushes, pruning the acacias, and weeding the garden beds.

Preening and pruning himself effulgendy and strutting vaingloriously about the platform as he picked up momentum, he gave the men the colors of the day again and shifted nimbly into a rousing pep talk on the importance of the bridge at Avignon to the war effort and the obligation of each man on the mission to place love of country above love of life.

While what I am to describe to you comes to fruition, I shall play the part of a serene old man, far removed from influence, weary indeed of a surfeit of it, an old countryman who seems mainly interested in the system devised on these umber hills by my neighbor Columella and by the freedman Sthenus for the abundant cultivation of grapes, and in the capital they will say that Seneca is at one of his villas writing tragedies, pruning vines, taking cold baths in all weathers at the age of sixty-two, and sending homiletic epistles to his friend Lucilius Junior, who, poor fellow, is already all too amply instructed by his wordy friend.

A local physician, untrained as a surgeon, created an operating table by propping a door across two pews, then sawed limbs off men as though he were pruning trees.

In the high-roofed, brightly lit growing-chamber, warm and humid, the women were at work plucking the unwanted flowers from the greenleaf plants and pruning the tendrils of the velvetberry vines.

In many pure spruce forests the larger trees have been able to withstand the pruning influences and remain limby, while the smaller ones, being pushed in height growth to reach sufficient light for survival, have cleared themselves with remarkable rapidity.

However, through drastic pruning, Spur had managed to bring three Macouns and one Sunset apple, and a Northstar cherry back into production again.

Carlson rejoiced over the carnage that ensued, though a strict Malthusian might have considered it as a long-overdue pruning.

She stabbed and hacked with a poleax that had replaced her pruning hook, her eyes narrowed with grim determination.

After pruning his programs and memories and then encoding them as an intense tachyon pulse, he set loose the zero-point energies of the spacetime within his great brain and exploded himself into the pieces of flotsam that Danlo had discovered orbiting the Star of Ede.

But he could not wholly free his programs from the Other, and so he repeated this pruning of himself many times.

Never look up from pruning her roses and find him smiling down at her from the terrace.

At the next of the greenish-purple ch'hala trees down the line, occasionally visible through the crowd, an MN-2E maintenance droid was carefully pruning away dead leaves.