Following a yellow buckeye bud burst

Spring is an excit­ing time for trees. After a long win­ter, buds erupt with beau­ti­ful col­ors and new growth. But have you ever checked in on a tree every day to see the progress?

While work­ing from home, Mr. Joe pho­tographed a sin­gle bud from one of his back­yard trees as the bud opened. Over the last two weeks, his yel­low buck­eye has com­plete­ly trans­formed! It’s amaz­ing how much plant mat­ter is stored in just one bud. How does it hap­pen? Over the win­ter large clus­ters of com­pound leaves, new branch growth, and even flow­ers have been wait­ing inside this sin­gle bud!

The yel­low buck­eye is an inter­est­ing and beau­ti­ful tree. While it has these strik­ing yel­low blooms in the spring, its leaves turn a gor­geous orange in the fall. It’s a dense shade tree. Did you know? The name “buck­eye” comes from the whitish scar on each seed. Those marks give it the appear­ance of a deer’s eye. You can learn more on the Arbor Day Foun­da­tion website.

Want to doc­u­ment buds on your prop­er­ty or local park? Con­sid­er join­ing project Bud­burst! Bud­burst brings togeth­er researchers, hor­ti­cul­tur­ists, and cit­i­zen sci­en­tists on a shared jour­ney to uncov­er the sto­ries of plants affect­ed by human impacts on the envi­ron­ment. Bud­burst tells these sto­ries through data col­lec­tion, data shar­ing, edu­ca­tion, and per­son­al con­nec­tions. Learn more here!