This is a survival mechanism...

As with all things it is relative however...

1>Are the trees of a grafted variety?

2> Did they dry out this past summer, or get overwated.

3> What kind of tree(s) are they?

it means that the root is trying to regenerate a new topgrowth as there is something wrong with the current trunk - it could be diseased even. Minimizing ALL pruning from when the bud first opens until the time when the leaves drop is the main thing to remember - however it takes a full-cycle of the sun to slow the resulting suckers...sometimes they even chop into the rootball to slow the suckering, but this is a bit extreme for me...

It would be hard to pinpoint exactly Mr.M.F.'s own opnion on pruning. He firmly advocates seed-grown trees. However, many older books of Arboriculture would not be proponents of pruning - but this is bearing in mind that the tree was properly manicured from the get go as a seedling by techniques called "Pleaching" and "Planching".
These are basically only bud removal and knicking, and pinching off the leaves at the stem. Even the "Grafting knife" was originally used for this purpose as knicking the stem at places just above or below a bud either hinders or promotes growth of that particular branch stem.

I used to have an old French Apple orhardists manual that had this down to a Science for each particular apple variety to the season/moon for when to do any particular technique needed...suffice to say that the modern rule of pruning after the sumemer growth is all too simplistic, and is a statement to how much knowledge has been indeed lost.
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