Dormancy serves to protect buds through winter

A flock of wild turkeys searches for fodder along a field’s edge, where oak, beech, maple and birch mark the line where the forest begins. The awkward creatures peck the ground as they step along, their dark brown feathers ruffled against the wintry breeze. Blue-tinged heads and beady dark eyes dart here and there, watching for danger as the day’s constant feeding begins.

One can often find turkeys grazing beneath the stark and leafless reddish-bronze branches of beech trees. They scratch at the grassy, snowless ground with their tough nails hoping to stir up a beechnut, the seed of the beech tree. Above their bobbing heads the amber-colored buds of the trees glisten in the low winter sunlight. Their tightly wrapped, papery, pointed buds are among the prettiest and most distinctive of Maine’s woodland species. Some of the plumpest buds yield flowers in spring, which, in turn, yield more nuts for the turkeys.

Some buds provide a feast for the eyes and are pleasant in texture and form. Others, of course, are truly edible. The buds and flowers of nasturtium have a peppery zest. The tightly formed, pink flower buds of chives offer the plant’s distinctive flavor and provide a vibrant hue for herbal vinegars. From the prickly Mediterranean bush Capparis spinosa come the flavorful buds known as capers. The quarter-inch round flower buds are pickled and used to flavor sauces.

In the millions of buds that endure Maine’s winters on the tips of trees and shrubs of the forest and yard, are leaves and flowers in embryo, awaiting the favorable cues of spring to burst with the renewal of life. The buds aren’t as lifeless in the cold of winter as one would imagine, but in a state of dormancy or rest.

For most deciduous trees, buds slip into dormancy when autumn temperatures drop and before the tree’s leaves turn or lose their color in autumn. Buds also are cued to dip into winter’s slumber when the days start to shorten significantly. Dormancy, a state of lowered metabolic rate, not total lifelessness, affords a means of survival for the crucial organs of plants. Their future – and the essential processes that take place in leaves that will gather nourishment for them and the flowers that will bear their next generation – is protected through the process of dormancy.

People are not so unlike plants. In these chilly days of winter, make like a bud: Rest, slow down, answer nature’s call to transcend winter’s edge and graciously await the more pleasant clime of spring.

Diana George Chapin is a NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941, or e-mail them to dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.