166 FIRST STUDIES IN PLANT LIFE 



April, as you hold back the leaf to look for the bud, 

 the leaf comes off in your hand, and lo, the missing 

 bud ! What is inside it ? 



9. What is inside a bud ? Remove gently with 

 a pin the smooth outer cap, and you uncover a 

 gummy cap that glistens in the sunshine. This gum 

 helps to keep the bud warm, and it serves also as a 

 waterproof coat. Below the gummy cap comes a 

 cloak covered with rich golden brown hairs. Then 

 come hairs, and more hairs, till it seems as if the bud 

 were wrapped up like an Arctic traveller. Then we 

 have another cloak, and then the first glimpse of the 

 coming leaves. 



10. If you can now get a large flower-bud of the 

 white poplar, you will see a bud of another kind. 

 Here, instead of caps, we have scales, small and large ; 

 more scales than in the plane tree bud, but no gum. 

 At last we come to the flower-cone, snugly sleeping 

 under a thick coverlet of beautiful white silky hair. 

 We shall never wonder again that buds can defy the 

 frosts of a winter night. They are as snug and warm 

 as a kitten under its mother's fur. 



11. How the beauty of spring lies hid in the bud. 



Here, then, in these little buds, lie shoot and flower, 

 ready, with the spring sunshine, to break into branch 

 and blossom. Now you can understand how it is that 

 in some backward seasons spring comes with a rush 

 of leaf and flower, spring does not make the leaf and 

 the flower ; all it does is to open the buds. The 

 spring sun sets the sap flowing briskly ; the bud 

 swells and throws off its many coats, and then the 

 green shoot breaks out into the light ! 



