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Anticipation of spring makes life way harder for me than it should. I can’t focus because I am anxiously checking out the window to see if the plants in my garden are growing.

Already, flowers are popping open and leaves are starting to peak out. I am often in awe of the simple reality, borne in the sap of countless generations, that deciduous woody plants are able to withdraw and extend leaves annually. It got me thinking about how amazing, something we take for granted, a bud, demonstrates seasonal change and millions of years of evolution all wrapped up in a neat package.

Part of the reason I am so interested in buds as of late is that I have been propagating native plants and watching to see what cuttings I took this winter will take.

These cuttings, taken from responsible locations, were dipped in a homemade rooting hormone, (tea made from willow cuttings) and planted in individual pots and left to take. This is a time honored skill of humans the world over, a useful way to perpetuate useful plants without needing their seeds. It’s magical sticking a twig in soil and watching it grow.

Most of the elders, willows, dogwoods, snow berries, roses, and half a dozen other cuttings have swelling buds, a sign that I might have been successful. But what is going on inside those buds and how do they know when it’s time to start putting energy into growth?

And a step further back — what is a bud?

Simply put, a bud is an undeveloped bundle of material on a plant. Of course there is much more complexity to ferret out and buds are further defined by where they are on the plant (location), what they look like (morphology), what they will do (function), and how they relate to future growth (status).

For example, until recently when their buds started to swell and burst, a favorite Osoberry (Oelmeria cerasiformis) shrub in my yard had scaly (morphology), dormant buds (status) that were both terminal and axillary (location). Now that they’ve started to burst open I can see that on this mature plant the flowers and leaves were mixed together in the buds (rather than being only vegetative or reproductive in function).

These details add up to tell us a lot about what is going on with the plant in question and how they have adapted to specific niches.

If we took a bud off a tree or shrub that was not quite bursting and cut it open crosswise, we’d find miniature versions of leaves and flowers developing inside. As I said before, you might find both occupying the same bud or individual buds for leaves (vegetative) and flowers (reproductive). Depending on the species, we might find buds clustered together in pointy little bracts at the end of a branch, like on an oak, or alone, in little rolled cigars, like those of a beech. A keen botanist can identify a plant in winter, at least to a family or genus, simply by observing the arrangement, shape, and texture of their dormant buds.

In case it wasn’t clear before, the buds that hold this year’s first leaves and flowers were laid down last fall, destined to lay dormant till now. Just as they were formed, they were also physically cut off from the xylem (a layer of cells that transport water and nutrients within a vascular plant) to keep them from being full of water and susceptible to freezing temperatures. However, while the pieces of the future leaves and flowers might be squished into the bud, they need water to grow.

That’s where flowing sap comes in, and though it’s not well understood in every species, it’s commonly held that when the sap starts to flow, bud burst is not far behind.

The vast majority of our deciduous trees and shrubs have buds covered in some sort of modified leaves, be they scaly, hairy, or smooth. These flexible coverings protect them until spring comes and things start to change inside the bud. Triggered by cells that are sensitive to sunlight these modified leaves burst aside to make way for new growth, (the length of nights are what actually matters for plant development, but we can just simplify here and say daylight).

Temperature matters too — more specifically the number of cold days over the winter are important for telling trees in temperate regions when to start leafing out again. This is why, when we have serious fluctuations in temperature, it can mess with a plant’s accounting and result in mistimed bud bursts. Climate change has and will have serious impacts on plants and their ability to adjust their clocks to new conditions. When your genes are based on millions of years of evolution in the long term, and the last 10 to 15 thousand years in the short term (since the last ice age) adjustments frequently don’t happen fast.

Often flowers appear before leaves. Right now, cherries, plums, forsythia, and multiple species of maples are blooming. (Timing of blooming and leafing out are reliant upon where a plant is growing, genetics, overall fitness, and obviously the species in question.)

Blooming before leafing out has a number of advantages for pollination. If a plant is wind pollinated, a bunch of leaves would make it harder for pollen to find purchase in the flowers of adjacent plants. Those that rely on insects for pollination want to make their blooms as easy as possible to find, particularly for early bloomers who are taking a risk by dancing around frost dates, when flying insects are also just emerging.

I don’t exaggerate when I say the knowledge and contemplation of buds is cooked into human society, and is of universal importance the world over, for as long as we’ve been humans.

Today, better understanding of bud dormancy and development informs how we grow food and materials for all manner of things. But if we step away from capitalism, it’s not hard to see the value of understanding the plants around us, even if it’s simply to have something to look forward to each spring.

As our senses awake to the sights, sounds, and even smells of buds bursting forth, we just might feel like we’ve reawoken ourselves as well.

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