Pruning shears, also called hand pruners (in American English), or secateurs (in British English), are a type of scissors use for plants. They are strong enough to prune hard branches of trees and shrubs, sometimes up to two centimetres thick. They are used in gardening, arboriculture, plant nursery works, farming, flower arranging, and nature conservation, where fine-scale habitat management is required. Loppers are a larger, two-handed, long-handled version for branches thicker than pruning shears can cut. History 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. In modern Europe, scissors only used for gardening work have existed since 1819, when the French aristocrat Antoine-François Bertrand de Molleville was listed in "Bon Jardinier", as the inventor of secateurs. During the late 1890s, secateurs were sold all over Europe and the US. Today secateurs are widely used by gardeners, vintners and fruit farmers. The world's first anvil pruners were developed and produced in 1923 by Walther Schröder in Kiel, Germany. The pruners were given the product name "Original LÖWE" and were distributed internationally as far back as 1925. Other companies are producing anvil pruners, include Bahco, Edma, Felco, Fiskars Gardena and Wolf Garten. An extensive collection of historical variants of secateurs can be seen at Breamore House, Hampshire, England. They are housed in their countryside museum. Designs There are three different blade designs for pruning shears: anvil, bypass and parrot-beak. Anvil pruners have only one blade, which closes onto a flat surface; unlike bypass blades it can be sharpened from both sides and remains reliable when slightly blunt. Anvil pruners are useful for cutting thick branches; one can bite into the stem from one direction, swing the handle around and bite further through narrowed wood from another direction. The anvil is made of a material softer than the blade, so that the blade is not damaged when it meets the anvil. Suitable materials for the anvil are plastic, aluminum, zinc, brass, or bronze alloys. The blades are made from hardened carbon or chromium steels. The hardness of the blades is generally between 54 and 58 HRC. On an anvil pruner, proper cutting is assured even if the blade swerves slightly to the left or right during cutting. As long as the blade