This Bud's for You

It looks like some little insect made a happy meal out of this little magnolia bud. This shrub is a magnolia shrub, and it is covered with buds that have developed and will emerge as next season’s flowers when the conditions are right. There are buds located up and down the branches, and, other than the fully emerged buds at the tips of the branches, the rest of them appear to be well protected within a bark covering. This probably serves to preserve the plant’s reproductive capacity in the event it is cut or damaged by weather or other environmental events. One can also observe lenticels (the white dots on the branch in the forefront of this picture) that provide the shrub with passive transpiration. In the spring, the leaves of this shrub will grow under the buds. Each leaf is responsible for nourishing its own bud, and each bud contains meristem cells within it. Thus, if the plant is cut, damaged or broken, the hormonal signals from meristem cells in the bud formerly above it (“telling” the bud not to grow) will thereby necessarily cease to flow downward, and this remaining bud will shoot up, forming a new leaf with a new bud. As we learned in class, this is an example of a simple morphology with a complex function. I have always wondered why buds appear on plants in the fall – the fact that it is the plant’s system for getting its reproductive apparatus set up for the following year is pretty interesting; the plant is thereby spreading out the use of its energy for reproductive purposes over time, as well as increasing its reproductive efficiency by ensuring that everything is ready to go once the conditions are just right.

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