Part Iv—Buds

BUDS IN WINTER

When school opened in September, all the trees were covered with leaves; and some of these trees were bent with their burden of pears and apples and peaches, while others were hung with prickly chestnut burrs or with acorns or walnuts.

But now all is changed. The woods look gray and bare; for nearly all the leaves have fallen save those of the oak, which are still holding fast to the branches. These oak leaves are brown and stiff and leathery. They crackle and rustle when the wind blows through them.

In the city squares you see the same change,—bare branches in place of green leaves.

At this season it is hardly worth while, perhaps you think, to go to the woods or to the park; for there is nothing to be seen,—no leaves, no flowers, almost no fruits. Better wait till spring for any such expedition.

Here you are wrong. Provided you know what to look at, and how to look at it, there is no month of the year when the woods and parks are not full of interest.

And so at this season, when the trees are bare of leaves, better than at any other, certain things can be studied.

I have asked your teacher to bring to school to-day branches from the different trees which are looking so cold and lonely. It is nearly always possible to find the horse-chestnut, the maple, or the cherry; and we will talk especially about these branches.

On your way to school, perhaps you pass every day a horse-chestnut tree; but its branches are so far above your heads that you may never have noticed that in winter the leafless twigs bear just such buds as you see in the picture (Fig. 129), and on the branch which is before you.

The largest bud grows on top. This is where the beautiful flower cluster that comes out in May lies hidden.

The smaller buds that grow lower down the stem hold only leaves. You see that these buds grow in pairs, one bud opposite another, and always above a sort of scar on the twig. This scar was made last fall by the breaking-off of a leaf.

Perhaps you fancy that these buds have only just made their appearance.

If you have any such idea as that, you are quite wrong. Last summer, when the leaves were large and fresh, the little buds, that were not to unfold for nearly a year, began to form, growing somewhat larger as the weeks went by, and folding themselves tightly in the brown, leathery wrappings that were to keep them safe from the cold of winter.

I should like you to pull off these wrappings, and see how well the horse-chestnut tree defends from cold its baby leaves.

First you find about seven of these outside wrappings. The very outer ones are thick and brown, and covered with the sticky stuff that makes them proof against rain.

The next ones are brown and thick where their tips are exposed to the air, while the inner ones are green and delicate. But altogether they make a warm, snug covering for young leaves and flowers.

As for the baby leaves themselves, they are all done up in a furry stuff that keeps them from catching cold, even if a gust of wind or a few drops of rain should manage to make a way through the waterproof and almost air-tight wrappings.

So you see that the leaves and branches and young flowers of a plant or tree are looked after just as carefully as is the seed within the seed case, or the baby plant in its seed shell.

A HAPPY SURPRISE

Here you see a branch from the red maple (Fig. 130).

On the flowering shoots three buds grow side by side. The middle, smaller one holds the leaves. These leaves do not appear until the two outer, larger buds have burst into flower clusters; for the flowers of the red maple appear before its leaves.

I want you to bring to school as many different kinds of branches as you can find, and I hope you will examine them all very carefully. Notice the position of their buds, and whether these grow close together or are scattered far apart, and whether one bud grows just opposite another; and look for the marks left by the leaves which broke off last fall.

When the buds are large enough, you will find it interesting to pull them apart (but you must do this with great care) and see how beautifully wrapped are the baby leaves and flowers.

I chose the branch of the horse-chestnut for special examination, because its large buds show their contents plainly.

When a bud grows on the tip of a stem, its work is to carry on that stem; but when it grows just above a leaf scar, you can be sure that it is a young branch. Such a branch may bear either leaves or flowers, or both.

But buds do not all grow up at the same time, or necessarily at all.

The strongest ones are the first to open. The others may keep quiet for some time, not unfolding, perhaps, unless some of the earlier ones are killed. In this case, the waiting buds try to fill the gap, and carry on the good work of clothing the tree with leaves and flowers.

Sometimes they wait over till another year, and occasionally a bud never opens at all.

You all enjoyed planting seeds, and watching them grow under your very eyes.

Now I am going to propose to you a scheme which has given me quite as much pleasure as my pot gardens.

When the buds on the winter branches have swelled the least little bit, after a few warm days in February perhaps, go to the woods and cut several branches in places where no one will miss them, and take them home and put them in warm water, in a warm, bright corner, and see what happens.

It will be a real joy to you, watching these little buds get bigger and bigger, till the outer wrappings are forced apart, and either thrown well aside, or pushed off altogether; and you will be filled with delight when the delicate baby leaves begin to stretch themselves, or, better still, when the pure, beautiful flowers burst from the brown, dead-looking twigs.

Get branches of cherry, apple, peach, and pear; and bring in the pussy willow, the maple, the Forsythia, the spicebush, and, if you can find it, the mountain laurel; and if you do not pass many moments of almost breathless pleasure watching the wonders these budding branches are so eager to reveal, you are not the children I take you to be.

SOME ASTONISHING BUDS

There are some plants which do not put any winter wraps on their delicate buds; and, strangely enough, these buds do not seem to suffer for lack of clothing.

In a warm country this would not surprise us. If we were going to spend the winter in the West Indies, we should not carry our furs with us, for we should not meet any weather cold enough to make them necessary; and so perhaps in the West Indies the buds have no more need of winter clothing than we ourselves.

But if we were to spend the Christmas holidays somewhere in our Northern mountains, if we were going for skating and coasting to the Catskills or the Adirondacks, we should not fail to take with us our warmest clothes.

And yet, if we walked in the Adirondack woods, we should meet over and over again a shrub bearing naked buds, their folded, delicate leaves quite exposed to the bitter cold.

This shrub is the hobblebush, the pretty flowers of which you see on p. 246.

I do not understand any better than you why this hobblebush does not tuck away its baby leaves beneath a warm covering. Neither do I understand how these naked leaves can live through the long, cold winter. I should like very much to satisfy myself as to the reason for this, for they do live and flourish; and I wish that such of you children as know the home of the hobblebush (and it is common in many places) would watch this shrub through the winter, and see if you can discover how it can afford to take less care of its buds than other plants.

There is one tree which seems to shield its buds more carefully in summer than in winter. This tree is the buttonwood. It grows not only in the country, but in many of our city streets and squares. You know it by the way in which its bark peels in long strips from its trunk and branches, and by the button-like balls which hang from the leafless twigs all winter.

If you examine one of these twigs, now that they are bare of leaves, you see the buds quite plainly; but if it is summer time, when the leaves are clinging to the branch, you see no buds, and suppose that they are not yet formed.

But here you are wrong.

“How can that be?” you ask. You looked carefully, and nowhere was there any sign of a bud.

But you did not look everywhere, after all.

If very carefully you had pulled off one of the leaves, you would have found the young bud tucked safely away beneath the hollow end of the leafstalk. This leafstalk fitted over it more neatly than a candle snuffer over a candle (Fig. 131).

Try this for yourselves next summer. I think you will be pleased with this pretty arrangement.

We learned that the potato, even though it is buried in the earth and does not look like it, is really one of the thickened stems of the potato plant.

The “eyes” of the potato look as little like buds as the potato itself looks like a stem. Yet these “eyes” are true buds; for, if we leave our potatoes in the dark cellar till spring, the “eyes” will send out slender shoots in the same way that the buds on the branches of trees send out young shoots.

As I told you before, the usual place for a bud is just between the stem and the leafstalk, or the scar left by the leafstalk; but if a stem is cut or wounded, oftentimes it sends out buds in other than the usual places.

This habit accounts for the growth of young shoots from stumps of trees, and from parts of the plant which ordinarily do not give birth to buds.

Some buds never open while fastened to the stem of the parent plant; but after a time they fall to the ground, strike root, and send up a fresh young plant.

The tiger lily, the plant that grows so often in old gardens, bears such buds as these. We call them “bulblets” when they act in this strange fashion.

Perhaps even more surprising than this is the fact that leaves sometimes produce buds.

In certain warmer countries grows a plant called the Bryophyllum. If you look carefully at the thick, fleshy leaves of this plant, along its notched edges you will see certain little dark spots; and if you cut off one of these leaves and pin it on your window curtain, what do you suppose will happen?

Well, right under your eyes will happen one of the strangest things I have ever seen.

From the row of dark spots along the leaf’s edge, springs a row of tiny, perfect plants (Fig. 132).

And when these tiny plants are fairly started, if you lay the leaf on moist earth, they will send their roots into the ground, break away from the fading leaf, and form a whole colony of new plants.

Now, those dark spots along the leaf’s edge were tiny buds; and the thick leaf was so full of rich food, that when it was broken off from the parent plant, and all of this food was forced into the buds, these were strong enough to send out roots and leaves, and to set up in life for themselves.

It will not be difficult for your teacher to secure some of these leaves of the Bryophyllum, and to show you in the schoolroom this strange performance.

All children enjoy wonderful tricks, and I know of nothing much prettier or more astonishing than this trick of the Bryophyllum.