Buds
In our climate the buds of trees are formed in the summer during the season’s growth. The bud at the tip of the stem is called the terminal bud, the buds in the axils of the leaf-scars are called the axillary or lateral buds. Buds contain complete branches in miniature which develop in the spring into a new crop of twigs. By opening a bud in winter the little leaves can be seen and often a cluster of flowers, packed away from the cold in marvellous warm wrappings.
As a rule the terminal bud carries on the growth of the tree and the lateral buds furnish the side branches. Flowers are found in both terminal and lateral buds, but sometimes they are enclosed in buds by themselves which open before the leaves come out in the spring, like those of the red maple and American elm,—these are called flower buds. Occasionally we find two or three lateral buds together called accessory buds,—superposed, if placed one above another as they are in the butternut; collateral, if side by side as in the red maple. When several buds are crowded together one bud usually remains latent. Latent buds are sometimes caught in the growing bark of the tree and remain undeveloped for years, breaking out at length perhaps up and down the sides of the trunk as we see them in “feathered elms.” These abnormal and irregular buds are called adventitious buds.
The winter buds of trees may be large or small, they may be slender, flat, oval, pointed or round, hidden or exposed, they may be smooth, downy, sticky, or rough, covered with scales or naked, and they may differ in color from pale yellow to an inky black.
From the great outlines of the trees against the sky to the little scales of the buds on the stems we marvel to find here as in all nature, order, law, consistency out of infinite variety.
Chapter II
THE HORSECHESTNUT
HORSECHESTNUT
Æsculus hippocastanum
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