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The mysterious growth of plants: Do you know what is the secret of young shoots?
In botany, a bud is an undeveloped or embryonic state of bud, usually appearing in the axil of a leaf or at the tip of a stem. Bud formation is a delicate and mysterious process, and buds may remain dormant for some time or may develop immediately into new branches.
The presence of buds not only has the potential to develop flowers specifically or shorten branches, but may also have the potential to expand branches in general.
In many woody plants, especially trees from cold or temperate climates, the buds are protected by a layer of modified leaves called bud scales. These bud scales can tightly wrap the more fragile buds. As buds begin to develop, the bud scales will swell slightly and eventually fall off, leaving horizontally extending marks on the surface of the growing stem.
These marks can help determine the age of young branches, as a bud forms at the end of each year of growth.
As it ages, however, these marks are obscured by later growth, so the age of older branches cannot be judged in this way. In many plants, bud scales do not form, and such buds are often called "light buds," and the young, undeveloped leaves of such buds are often heavily hairy.
For example, in some shrubs (such as sumac and certain elders), there are such light buds. The presence of light buds makes this type of plant seem to still retain vitality in the cold winter. In addition, in some herbaceous plants, the morphology of the buds is extremely simplified, usually consisting of only cells and distributed in the leaf axils.
Brassica, for example, has unusually large apical buds, while Brussels sprouts represent numerous lateral buds.
The distribution of buds is the same as that of leaves, with alternate, opposite and clustered forms. It is worth mentioning that many plant buds appear in unexpected places. These buds are called "emergent buds." Emerging buds take on really different shapes, from small, brown outer bud scales, to larger green bud scales, to inner bud scales, showing that those bud scales are actually changes to the leaves to protect the plant. For more fragile parts, such changes are all wonderful.
Types of buds
The classification of buds is very useful in plant identification, especially in winter when trees lose their leaves. The shape and position of the buds provide key information for identification. Buds can be classified based on location, status, morphology and function.
For example, they are divided according to their location: apical buds are located at the top of the stem, axillary buds are in the armpits of leaves, and emerging buds appear in other parts, such as trunks or roots.
According to status, buds can be divided into accessory buds and dormant buds. Accessory buds are secondary buds that form around the main bud, while dormant buds are buds that form at the end of the growing season and remain dormant until the start of the next growing season. For morphology, buds are often referred to as scaly or squamous, as well as hairy buds.
Functionally, buds can be divided into vegetative buds, which contain only leaf structures; reproductive buds, which contain only flower embryonic structures; and mixed buds, which contain both leaf and flower embryos.
These buds not only have different shapes but also play different roles in the plant's life cycle. It is precisely because of these special properties of buds that plants can survive in extreme environments.
With a deeper understanding of the plant growth process, we are increasingly aware that plants have diverse adaptation mechanisms at different stages. And in this charming ecological world, what secrets do the buds hide?
