Pruning shears, additionally known as hand pruners (in American English) or secateurs (in British English), are a type of scissors used for plants. They're strong sufficient to prune onerous branches of trees and shrubs, generally up to 2 centimetres thick. They're utilized in gardening, arboriculture, plant nursery works, farming, flower arranging, and nature conservation, the place fine-scale habitat administration is required. They are typically manually powered, durable garden trimmer though electric variations are available. Loppers are a larger, two-handed, long-handled version for branches thicker than pruning shears can minimize. Cutting plants as part of gardening dates to antiquity in both European and East Asian topiary, with specialized scissors used for Chinese penjing and its offshoots - Japanese bonsai and Vietnamese Hòn Non-Bộ - for over a thousand years. Through the late 1890s, secateurs were bought throughout Europe and the US. Today secateurs are extensively utilized by gardeners, vintners and fruit farmers. The world's first anvil pruners had been developed and produced in 1923 by Walther Schröder in Kiel, Germany.

The pruners were given the product identify "Original LÖWE" and had been distributed internationally as far again as 1925. Other corporations producing anvil pruners embrace Bahco, Edma, Felco, Fiskars Gardena and Wolf Garten. An extensive assortment of historical variants of secateurs might be seen at Breamore House, Hampshire, England. They're housed of their countryside museum. There are three completely different blade designs for pruning shears: anvil, bypass and parrot-beak. Anvil pruners have only one blade, which closes onto a flat surface