Terminal Buds, Apical Dominance!!

Don’t yawn already, it might be interesting! It’s growing season and trees are bursting at the buds to push growth,

A little trivia for you, shrubs and trees have several types of buds; terminal, secondary, and latent buds. A terminal bud is the biggest bud you see in the picture. The secondary buds are the three smaller buds you see. Latent buds are buds that lie dormant and may or may not ever be prompted to come out.

Terminal buds send out signals to the root system to receive more energy and resources than the secondary buds. In the case of damage to a limb, the latent buds can be put into play. Think of trimming a hedge and seeing all of the back budding that takes place.

More trivia: sorry. Trees are generally apically dominant when it comes to how it grows. Meaning the apex gets more resources than the side branches, thus the reason trees grow up to be tall. All of this is an important part of my bonsai hobby. How things grow is part of how we create pleasing images.

We could head in several different directions here so I’ll try to choose one. Growing pine bonsai is all about equalizing the energy of all the buds. Leaving the terminal apex bud alone will push growth out of the boundary of the image I am trying to create. The shortest explanation is in the spring when the candles(pine term for buds) begin to push, I trim off half of the candle. Trimming off the whole candle would just stop growth all together, trimming off half means the latent buds that are waiting to come out, and will now have a reason too. Also fertilization becomes important as that is what will drive even more buds to push. All of these buds are part of what we use to create pleasing, full branches.

SO WHAT… Is there a point or just a horticulture lesson? The Bible asks us to look out for the widows, orphans, strangers, and the poor over and over again. The strong, give up some of their strength for the purpose of bringing life to others. Now some are quick to jump in and say that’s a communist, socialist way to think. But we seem to miss the obvious difference. There is a HUGE difference between a government mandate and personal generosity. It’s so different it might be worth a blog entry, but it’s also so obvious that it’s not even worth discussing because it’s so obvious… something about not seeing a forest because there are too many trees.

God invites us to a generous life, most of all because He is a generous God and being like Christ is the goal. God so loved the world that He gave. He took His might and strength and surrendered it on the cross so that latent buds like us, could find life. The paradox!!!