Today I looked for terminal bud scars on my twig. (See my last post for some info on these.)
Wow, there it is. Rings right above where these two tiny twiglets branch off. Here you can really imagine how the center bud broke through the end of the twig right there.
I had to kind of hang out the window to get this next picture, but I managed to get most of the entire twig in the picture. I found four spots where there were terminal bud scars.
The tip of the twig is right up by my hand there. Going down from there, there are three scars about an equal distance apart and then the next is waaaaay down the twig (the perspective here makes it seem shorter, but the twig is growing directly towards the window, so that part of the twig is much farther away from me). After that scar, the twig bark gets much thicker and then it joins to a branch. Since each of these scars indicates where new growth began in the subsequent year, I'd say that my twig is maybe five or six years old. And from the relative growth, I'd conclude that four years ago was a good year for my tree! (For what it's worth, the National Climactic Data Center says that 2007 was the 10th warmest year on record for the US!)
Wow, there it is. Rings right above where these two tiny twiglets branch off. Here you can really imagine how the center bud broke through the end of the twig right there.
I had to kind of hang out the window to get this next picture, but I managed to get most of the entire twig in the picture. I found four spots where there were terminal bud scars.
The tip of the twig is right up by my hand there. Going down from there, there are three scars about an equal distance apart and then the next is waaaaay down the twig (the perspective here makes it seem shorter, but the twig is growing directly towards the window, so that part of the twig is much farther away from me). After that scar, the twig bark gets much thicker and then it joins to a branch. Since each of these scars indicates where new growth began in the subsequent year, I'd say that my twig is maybe five or six years old. And from the relative growth, I'd conclude that four years ago was a good year for my tree! (For what it's worth, the National Climactic Data Center says that 2007 was the 10th warmest year on record for the US!)
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