Field Notes—

The Emissary Buds Of Spring Demand The End Of Winter

By Curtiss Clark

The woodpile is a fair measure of our patience with winter. It is running low.

So in these days of March, we wait. We wait for the long icy fingers of arctic air to loosen their grip on the throat of New England. We wait for western winds to roll low thick bats of leaden clouds into the North Atlantic. We wait for corn snow in barn shadows to shrink and expire in one last heave of freeze and thaw. We wait for frost to give ground to growing things that need it now as night and day come into balance for the equinox.

We are not the most impatient of living things, however. The shareholders of the earth’s largest enterprise — photosynthesis — are eager to get started on the renewal and expansion of the northern hemisphere’s biomass, one stem, one leaf, one blossom at a time. The great engine of this huge manufacturing process is just now jump-starting itself with the two-cycle stroke of warm days and cool nights, drawing sweet sap up into the sugar maples, and into every other rooted living thing.

This early, long, slow pulse swells and breaks the protective scales on the newly tumescent buds of the maples, lilacs, and magnolias, signaling the resurgence of life and its perennial demand for winter’s unconditional capitulation. At the apex of each plant is the terminal bud — the tip of the spear that presses the point of the season’s surrender.

Each terminal bud contains remarkable tissue called apical meristem, which is made up of cells that can reproduce indefinitely. These are undifferentiated cells found in the roots and shoots of the plant where growth can take place. And like stem cells in animals, they are capable of developing into different types of plant structures, including roots, or stems, or leaves, or flowers — whatever the plant needs at that particular point.

The buds are literally the stuff of life. And not just for plants. At this time of year, squirrels rip the sweet, tender buds off sugar maples to supplement their meager late winter diet, and chickadees, who seek out sustenance everywhere, follow the squirrels around the maples, sipping carbohydrates from the sugared sap that bleeds from the wounds.

Ultimately, most of the buds will leaf out or blossom as spring marches into April and May. The trees will grow taller and broader, and the underlying shrubs and plants will thicken and spread, each reaching for the sun, synthesizing light into life. They employ an elegant manufacturing process that uses eight photons of light to strip elections from a water molecule (H2O), casting off the oxygen and using the remaining hydrogen to combine with carbon dioxide (CO2) to create organic molecules, like sugars, which fuel a metabolic process that builds cells and tissues and energy for all kinds of biological activity. They store much of that energy, which started out as light from the sun, in their cellular structure.

So as the woodpile at our place draws down along with our patience for winter, the wood that we burn in the stove and fireplaces releases the energy of that stored sunlight in the form of heat. This transaction, I suppose, makes us shareholders in the photosynthetic enterprise right along with the plants.

But frankly, I’m more concerned about running out of patience with winter than I am about running out of wood. In March, I would rather absorb heat from the sun directly than through a wood fire. So I keep checking the buds on the maples, the lilacs, and the magnolias as they swell with the rising power of light over darkness.  It is reassuring to know their demands are the same as mine: winter’s unconditional surrender.