Recently in buds Category

This is not a race, but still, I'm rooting for my tree to stay in the lead!

So here's how the buds looked yesterday after many cold and windy days:



And here's how the same bud cluster looked three days ago:

Back at the branch...

There's not much change to report. Here's how the buds looked on Saturday.



And here's how the same bud cluster looked this morning.



Hmmmm. It's been mighty cold 'round here, so I guess these buds are waiting until spring returns to send out any more purple stuff.

Elsewhere... I walked by some trees that I'd snapped some pictures of a couple of weeks ago. Back then, I took a tiny twig I'd found from a baby tree and was examining its structure.



Well, this morning, it's fellow twiggies still on the tree look like this.

So just how far did the little purple things grow in two (rather chilly, rather cloudy) days? Here are some pictures I got on Tuesday.

Here's a little tree I walk past every day as I walk my boys to school.



It was planted last year after the tree that used to be here was finally removed (it hadn't been growing new leaves for a couple of years). The tree is just so darn cute! And it's short enough that I can reach up and grab hold of a twig to get closer look. So I did just that. After about 5 minutes of observing and taking the following pictures, the owner of the house next to the tree called out the window: "Hey, Alison, what'cha doin' out there?" Oops, busted.



It was so worth it though. Just look at those fabulous oval peachy red buds! Beneath each of the buds is a little scar from where the leaf from the last season fell off. And that's where the new bud grows. Talk about healing! If you look at the bottom of that tiny stem the three little buds are on, you can see some gray ridges. My teacher tells me that that's where the growth from the previous season ended. It's a scar made from the new bud pushing out of the tip there. (I noticed a bud on my tree the other day that had me asking this very question!) If we look down the length of the twig to find the next set of gray rings, we can see how far this twig grew last year.



I think this gray bump above this sentence might be it. Wow. I don't even know what kind of tree this is, but it seems to me that that's pretty good growth for such a little tree.

Now let's look at an amazing twig I found on the ground at the kids' school. This twig was so long and so green, I had to take some pictures of it. And it had the coolest buds! They're sort of fuzzy. I'm a sucker for fuzzy buds!



And, lookie, it has those growth scars as well.



One more twig to investigate before we return home. This one caught my eye because the very tips of the buds looked like they might be green. Leaves, maybe???



I've got a lot of questions about these types of buds. Is that a leaf? And if it is, is the whole leaf in there all folded and wrapped up already? And how does that brown part of the bud get wrapped around it like a screw? I love that there is something so perfectly wrapped and shaped like that in nature.

Anyhoo, the twig...

And right on time, the swollen buds from three days ago have started to open!!

It's warm today (45 degrees F) and it's sunny. I think to myself, what is my tree waiting for? More light. Check. Higher temperatures. Check. So, let's go take a look.

After watching S's little bean sprout over the last weeks, I've started wondering how my tree buds will sprout. I've been thinking of them as spots where new leaves will just pop out. But is that what happens at the buds? If that's so then when do the branches ever grow longer? Is it possible that new branches will shoot out from the buds, with new leaves off of them? Perhaps the new shoots would even push the bud out along the end, like S's bean sprout keeps part of the bean up at the top.

My tree isn't telling me, so I went searching around the neighborhood for some signs of new growth on other trees and I found some interesting things.



The narrow little branch coming off after the cluster of buds is a lighter, redder color than the rest of the twig. Did that just grow in the last few weeks? It looks really new and young. It's so colorful and smooth. Are those little buds that are all clustered together also growing farther and farther away from that older looking part of the twig?

Time to check the buds on my tree.

With the help of my husband, I've figured out how to take some really close-up pictures of the buds on my tree and they look much more complex than I had perceived before. What appeared to be one simple bud on the tip of a branch now reveals itself to be made up of several different parts.There's a sort of center bud and two darker-colored, um, let's call 'em wings, on either side. Each bud seems to have this structure. Did these wings used to cover the whole inner bud? Are they pulling away from it? Or are they growing alongside it? Or were they always there and I just hadn't been able to identify them before now?

The other day, I noticed that the top branch of my tree was broken. I speculated that it might have broken off in one of our January snowstorms and that there might be some broken branches beneath the snow surrounding my tree. After two days of well above average temperatures, a good deal of snow melted (there's now only about a foot surrounding the tree), and, indeed, a small group of branches has been revealed. Given their location in the snow, I'd say they broke off during one of the last couple of snowstorms that dumped feet of wet, heavy snow on top of earlier frozen snow.



Since this is the city, the nearest tree is many meters away in another cutout on the other side of a driveway. Therefore, I feel confident that these branches did belong to my tree. Furthermore, the largest branch in this pile looks similar in diameter to the branch at the very top of my tree and has the same sort of break on it. I'm guessing that this is the exact bit that broke off up top.

I snapped off one small twig to get a closer look. It's covered with little buds just like the twig I can see out of my window. And look, the buds seem to have little shells that they are coming out of. Or something. They're not just solid bumps on the side of the twig. These, at least, were already developing into something more complex. They're also soft. When I press on them, it's like pushing on the eraser tip of a pencil. I wonder how close these were to starting to "pop"?  



It's a little sad that this twig, ready and waiting to sprout new leaves, has been separated from the tree. But its loss is my gain. I snatched up the little guy to bring inside for further investigation. 



The twig is covered in these dark semi-circular bumps that look like they were the base or shelf under an old bud. At the top of each bud shelf there's what looks like a cut, maybe where the leaf was connected and fell off?  The twig also has several segments, separated by what look like knuckles. Perhaps these are from growth each year.  Each year, the twig grows longer at the wrinkly, knuckly part?

What a lucky find for me!