what's missing from this picture?

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While examining my tree closely looking for any signs of sticky burrs or new leaves or anything really, I noticed that several of the branches have no buds at all. The tips of all these branches are so barren looking. They look almost broken off at the end.  Are these dead? I wonder if there is any chance that their buds will grow later.

tree_2_22_dead_branches.jpg

It seems so sad that these dead branches are still hanging on the tree while that broken-off top branch I found in the snow was all covered with buds. I wonder if these have stayed on because they were protected from the wind and storms down here. But did that also mean that they didn't get enough light? Why did they die? And is it bad for the tree to have dead branches hanging on it?

I walked around the tree to get a different look at the dead branches and suddenly noticed two spots on the trunk where it looks like largish limbs must have been cut off of my tree.

tree_3_1trunk.jpg

tree_3_1trunk2.jpg

And this reminded me of my little half-tree Bud on the other side of the house. So I paid him a visit to get a picture of the part that was dead for so long and then removed last year.

bud_3_1.jpg

Ugh. That is just plain old wrong looking. It looks like a tree growing out of a tree or almost like the original tree was impaled by this other part. Yikes. Despite having this rather gruesome scar, Bud actually looks fine when he's got all his leaves. He's a sweet little tree.

I wanted to get a picture of the good side of Bud, so I went up on to the balcony and tried to get a photo of the crown.

bud_2_23.jpg

You can still see the section that was cut off down there, but up here you can also see the pinky/red fleshy sort of buds that are growing on the tips and ends of Bud's twigs. There are a lot fewer buds on Bud than on my tree. Different growths for different folks, I guess. There are also lots of ridges on the twigs around the buds. Hmmm...I wonder what kind of tree Bud is???

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This page contains a single entry by Alison published on March 2, 2011 1:44 PM.

museum trees was the previous entry in this blog.

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