Recently in changes Category

Hmmm. The rain always reveals the tree's secrets and this time, the rain made the flowers purple again. Weird. That makes no sense. I decided that since the rain always makes everything on the tree look darker, the flowers still had some purple in them and the rain was just washing out the light green color.

Today, two days later, the green is back. And how!

Woot. Purple gone; green on!

The texture of the flowers has changed a lot too. When they were just out of the buds, they were firm like a koosh ball. Recently they've felt more wispy and flowery. So I thought I'd see what they feel like today now that they're all green.

OMG. It's pollen! THE GREEN IS POLLEN! How did I not see that coming? I was sure the flowers themselves were changing color. But that yellowy-green pollen just brushes right off. And it probably washed off that one day in the rain.

Geez, I hope I'm not allergic to ash tree pollen.

Two days later, the wings had stretched out so much that the buds looked like little webbed duck feet.

(It occurred to me that this structure - a vertical line in the center with two lines coming out at a 45 degree angle on either side - is the exact same structure of all the branches. It was one of the first things I noticed about my tree and inspired my husband's logo tree drawing.)

Yesterday, the center part of the buds started to uncurl just enough so you could begin to recognize tiny leaves in there.

It looks like three or four leaves huddled together.

You can see a leaf right there in the center. The leaves on the sides look like hands holding it. Beautiful.

And just this morning, in the corner that gets the morning sun, I spotted one bud where the leaves were beginning to separate from each other and unfurl in what looks like a spiral shape.

 
Yippee! I wonder how many leaves are going to be in there. I wonder how big they'll be. Not too much longer now!

So, I guess the green isn't just growing below the purple. In fact, it looks more like the purple was covering the green maybe and is breaking off. Or maybe the purple opens up. You know how if you open a book and put the two covers together in the back, all you see is pages. Is that what's happening? Was the green inside of the purple?

OMG! That's full on green in there. What is that doing there? Are these turning green? Or were they green and then turned purple?

I went back to my pictures from the weekend before the terminal buds opened and I hadn't even started thinking green yet. I found this picture of a developing flower.

What struck me about this is the color of the tips of the tiny flower petals coming from the buds. Those on the top of the twig have purple tips, but on the bottom, the tips are green. See it? What's that about??

 
and on April 9th...

and yesterday...

WHOA! Hold up! That is GREEN. The bud at the tip opened up. Just since the weekend!

Let's look at twig #2. April 7th...

and on April 9th...

and yesterday, April 12th...

Squeee! More green!

I'd been wondering what those terminal buds were going to do. All the side buds have been opening up for weeks, revealing the pretty purple flowers but the buds on the tips, nothing. And now, it turns out that's where the green was hiding.

Once I realized that something was going on at the tips, I started seeing buds like this everywhere. They're all doing this!



They're like long green tongues coming out.

There seems to be a twist or fold or something through the middle. Is that a super curled up leaf in there??

Wow. Wow. Wow.

And here's how they looked yesterday, after four days drinking in the sun and warmth of spring.

This is a dramatic change in one week. The brown is almost entirely gone. I feel like last week they looked like brown buds with some purple stuff coming out, whereas they now look like bundles of purple flowers bound together with some brown paper. Like a bouquet you might buy in the store.

Here's another branch on April 5th:



And yesterday, April 11th:



What a week for that twig, huh?!

So was all this progress due to the weather? Or was this just the natural progression of the process that started way back on the first day of spring? Was it progressing more slowly until the weather warmed up or is the beginning just slower than this part? I don't know if what I've observed is enough to answer these questions. But I have heard of "forcing" plants and flowers. As far as I know, it's a way of encouraging or tricking the plant to open up and start blooming earlier than it would normally. I think one way of forcing a plant is to give it some of the weather conditions it needs to get started growing again. So perhaps this great week of growth wasn't merely programmed in from the start. Perhaps the weather had the same effect on these buds that it did on most Bostonians this last week: the warmth on our faces and sunshine on our backs managed to coax us, once and for all, out of our winter havens and our weather skepticism. It's okay to come out now. Spring has truly arrived.

The kids often investigate with me. My little girl likes to use the 'noculators'.

The first thing we notice now when we look out the window these days is how every branch is studded with these rounded, swollen, opening buds.



It's something you probably wouldn't notice down below just walking along the street, but so much has changed up here. For comparison, here's a picture of my twig in the very first week of this blog. You can see how the branches behind appear almost smooth, with the early buds just small bumps.



And, my how those buds have grown! Through the 'noculators' we can see that they are now almost completely open.

This is how they looked in February:

As amazing as this transformation has been so far, we all know that the really dramatic changes are still to come!

Dunno. Maybe. Maybe not.

Here's one more taken yesterday.

And the same twig on March 17th.



Well, it's just a theory!