Boxwood fruit - take them off?

[BrianBay9]

So boxwood folks, do you regularly remove the fruit as it's forming on the theory that they take energy from growth of roots and shoots? Ignore them? Use them to balance energy - leave where you want to slow growth, remove where you want to stimulate growth?

My big boxwoods have hundreds of fruit, maybe thousands. I could see that in aggregate they take away a lot of energy. But they also would demand a lot of time to remove.

 

[Forsoothe!]

Part of the maturation process of many plants includes drying out the seeds/pods and often enough that particular branch-end dries out or dies as part of the process. I have much better "luck" with plants that I remove flowers on when they are past glory, especially including fruits or seeds. Lots of trees don't have a second flush and flower buds for the next year until the seed ripening is done. That is especially true of Azaleas grown north of its range where the season is not long enough to both ripen seeds and build flower buds for the next year, so you get flowers every other year.

 

[Sekibonsai]

I take them off. The tree doesn't need to expend excess energy producing them.