I

THE BUDS ON THE TWIGS

Now the buds begin to break. The firm winter-buds swell. Their scales
part. Tips of green appear. Tiny leaves come forth, neatly rolled
inward, growing as they expand, the stalks lengthening. Resurrection
is astir in the tree.

Several leaves issue from every bud. From some buds arise only leaves;
from others a flower-cluster emerges from the leaf-rosette, showing
faint color even before it expands. Very close together and tight
these unopened little flowers are packed as they emerge; if we had
looked at them with a lens as they lay in the bud in the long winter
we should understand why; now they escape their bonds and rapidly grow
as they are delivered, yet at first pressed together by head and stem
in their soft gray wool.

Thus are there two kinds of buds on the twig of the bearing
apple-tree,--the leaf-buds (sending forth leaves only), and the
flower-buds (bearing both leaves and flowers). And if we wish to
analyze more closely, we discover two kinds of leaf-buds,--those that
send forth a rapidly growing shoot bearing the leaves, and those from
which the leaf-cluster remains practically sessile on the branch.
These latter, or the strongest and best of them, will probably give
rise to short fruiting spurs and the others to elongated leafy
branches.

Before me as I write is an apple limb more than three feet long. It
has been a vigorous grower, for it is only three years old. The years
can be readily made out; there are two sets of "rings" separating
them. You may see these rings on all young apple limbs. They represent
the scars of the scales of the past terminal buds.

Three years ago my shoot was sent off from its parent branch; that
year it grew but four inches, bearing leaves on its sides, in the
axils of which developed buds for the winter and at the end a larger
terminal bud. Let us call this shoot 1918. Two years ago (1919),
whilst I was in a distant land, the terminal bud gave rise to a shoot
nineteen inches long; two buds near the end of the 1918 shoot pushed
out clusters of leaves and made spurs about one-half inch long; all
the other buds, five in number, remained dormant, and now they are
dead and are rapidly becoming mere scars. Last year (1920) the
terminal bud of 1919 gave rise to a shoot fifteen inches long; three
buds at the base of this two-year (1919) shoot remained dormant;
fourteen buds produced spurs. It is now the spring of 1921; the 1920
shoot has four dorm