Buds Bursting

Despite almost two weeks of freezing temperatures and constant snow, we found these fresh new leaves sprouting from elder Sambucus nigra twigs in Durham city yesterday. Unlike most trees and shrubs, common elder doesn't form closed winter buds gripped by tough bud scales. Instead it forms open leafy buds, that can sprout into new growth at the first available opportunity.

Nearby we found Sambucus racemosa, a relative of our native elder that has been introduced from mainland Europe into North East England and is more commonly found in Scotland. You can see a  photo of the plant in flower by clicking here. Unlike our native elder, which produces deep purple, almost black fruit, this species carries bunches of larger scarlet fruits. It also differs from the native species in producing these rather attractive winter buds, whose bud scales are already beginning to loosen.

The Wonderful Miss Waghorn ....

When I was a kid I attended a rural village school, the like of which is – I suspect – now rare, if not extinct. It only had four teachers, the first of whom was Mrs. Matthews, a jolly, earth-mother figure who was just perfect for acclimatising bewildered infants to the educational system. Next-up was Miss  Waghorn. Some pupils faced the looming possibility of progressing into her class with feelings of dread, verging on terror.

Miss Waghorn was a figure who could have stepped straight out of the pages of Dickens. She must then have been in her late fifties. She very tall and very thin. She wore buttoned shoes, long dresses with high collars and long rows of buttons. Lots of buttons. She wore her long grey hair on a tight bun above a severe expression. You didn’t mess with Miss Waghorn. When she glanced up from her register and gave you ‘the look’ over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses it could freeze your blood. It had even been known to cause spontaneous incontinence in more sensitive transgressors. But Mrs. Waghorn had some wonderful qualities.

One was consummate skill in the art of storytelling and reading stories. If the class had managed to get through the week without incurring her wrath, Friday afternoon was story time and she could bring books to life. I can still hear her reading from Kenneth Graham’s Wind in the Willows, while the class sat spellbound in their desks. I can also remember what came after each instalment.

If the weather was fine she’d take us all down to the stream at the bottom of the school playing field, with the promise that we might see some of the characters from the book in real life. The whole class (in reality, about 15) would creep forward on their hands and knees. It must have looked strange to the casual passer-by. Usually we’d hear a ‘plop’ and see the trail of bubbles that marked the escape route of a startled water vole. Occasionally, if we were quiet enough, we might catch a glimpse of the animal itself, grazing on the grassy edge of the stream.

You might be wondering what this indulgent outbreak of nostalgia has to do with the photos of the horse chestnut bud, above and below.



Well, Miss Waghorn was a big fan of nature tables. The one in her class grew to become a mini-natural history museum as the year progressed. Skulls and skeletons, fossils, flowers and twigs, tadpoles, bird’s eggs and nests, pinned butterflies - all accumulated as the seasons advanced. In the 1950s collecting from nature wasn’t socially and ecologically unacceptable – ecology hadn’t reached the public consciousness – and its impact would be small compared with the effects of agrochemicals and pollution that were still to come. My contribution to the nature table was a dead bat, which earned me a lot of credit with Miss Waghorn, even though it did pong a bit on hot days.

One of the big events in the nature table calendar came in late February, with the ‘sticky bud’ competition. Everyone had to cut a horse chestnut twig, keep it in a jam jar of water and draw its progress as it opened.  

It was an exercise in close observation rather than drawing skill and I suspect it was commonplace in rural schools throughout the country at that time. This illustration above comes from Wild Life Through the Year by Richard Morse, first published in 1942 and republished several times until 1959 - the kind of handbook for nature table observational exercises that teachers like Miss Waghorn woud have kept in their desk at the front of the class.

If she had been visited by today’s school inspectors, obsessed with national curriculum, standard attainment tests and league tables, they would probably have been horrified. I don’t suppose that spontaneously taking time out on a sunny afternoon to creep up on water voles – even if there was time left for it after completing a full hazard assessment – fits in well with today’s busy teaching schedule.

Miss Waghorn – and most of the water voles – are long gone, but not the memory of her nature table and the ‘sticky bud’ season. Which is why I like to keep one in a jam jar of water at his time of year.

A Tree-spotter's Guide to Buds: part 1

A beech Fagus sylvatica bud. It always seems to me that buds are under-appreciated natural objects, not just because of their inherent beauty but because that explosion of greenery that we call spring is already pre-packaged inside, protected by bud scales but ready to unfold just as soon as a winter's chill breaks the bud's dormancy.

Charcoal-black ash Fraxinus excelsior buds on grey twigs are unmistakeable. Some buds will burst to reveal a mass of crimson stamens in early spring, others will burst much later to unfurl their foliage. Ash is always the last native tree to come into leaf in Britain.

Hazel Corylus avellana buds, with next year's catkins already formed and ready to elongate and shed pollen next February. Hazel twigs have bristly hairs on their surface. The leaves only unfurl after the catkins have shed their pollen, so as not to inhibit the flow of airborne pollen.

These are the distinctive winged fruits of hornbeam Carpinus betulinus, that cling to the twigs long after leaf fall. You can just see one of the small brown nuts attached to one of the bracts, bottom right.....

... and these are hornbeam buds, which are not quite so distinctive.

A sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus bud, which is particularly attractive in spring when it swells, elongates and in many trees becomes flushed with purple pigments.

And finally, a horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum 'sticky bud', with the horse shoe-shaped scar of one of last summer's leaf stalks. For generations of children (me included) who went to rural schools that had a 'nature table', the annual ritual of cutting these buds in early spring and watching them unfold in a jam-jar of water was an annual, memorable ritual that became an enduring totem of spring. For a close look at the marvel of microscopic packaging inside one of these buds, hop over to http://beyondthehumaneye.blogspot.com/2009/11/marvel-of-miniaturisation.html

For part 2 see http://cabinetofcuriosities-greenfingers.blogspot.com/2009/12/tree-spotters-guide-to-buds-part-2.html

For a Tree-Spotter's Guide to Fruits and Seeds, visit http://cabinetofcuriosities-greenfingers.blogspot.com/2010/10/tree-spotters-guide-to-fruits-and-seeds.html

For more posts on tree ID click here