After autumn's spectacular color show, after the hickories have shed their golden leaves, following the fireworks of maple, sassafras and tupelo, when the last fading embers of the scarlet oaks have been extinguished, then the branches of our hardwood trees lie barren in the winter wind. NOT!

Winter branches are not bare! Winter twigs are studded with jewels. The tip of each branch contains the packaged promise of next year's growth. This package is called the bud.

A tree bud consists of next year's leaves, stems, and perhaps flowers, which are folded, twisted, crumpled, pressed together and covered by a waterproof coating of modified leaves called bud scales.

Buds are small. You have to be close enough to touch a tree to notice its buds. Take time to examine a twig in fall or winter. You will be amazed by the diversity of color, form, and texture of these distinctive features of our winter flora. Tree buds come in any shape that can be constructed with a curved line.

Let's start by looking at the bud of one of the most common trees found at low elevations in the southern Appalachians, the Tulip Tree. Tulip Tree buds, like the buds of most of our hardwood trees, are formed in late July and can be readily viewed from August through April.

Tulip Tree buds are long and flattened and have two covers (bud scales) which meet at a central ridge or suture. With a little imagination, you can see the resemblance of this type of bud to the bill of a duck. The duck's-bill buds of Tulip Trees start out green in July and gradually acquire a purplish-gray tinge during the course of the winter.

Inside a Tulip Tree bud are usually five to seven tiny, perfectly formed leaves, ready to explode into life when the proper chemical signal is received following a period of winter dormancy. Each tiny leaf is folded in half along its midrib and bent backward along one side of a clamshell-like pair of modified stipules which enclose the next, somewhat smaller leaf.

Next spring these leaves will unfurl, the branch will elongate, perhaps additional leaves will be generated at the apex, and a new bud will form at the growing tip.

Through most of the year, tree buds enclose and protect the delicate growing tips of twigs and branches. Winter buds are often sealed with wax and packed with moist cottony hairs to prevent the embryonic tissues from drying out during the long winter months. In this way, buds can be compared to seeds and bud scales to protective seed coats. Lets look at the buds of another common roadside tree, the Flowering Dogwood. Flowering Dogwoods exhibit two distinct types of buds. Flower buds are large, onion-shaped, covered by four bud scales, and found at the tips of many branches. Leaf buds are smaller and slender, with two scales that meet like the beak of a tiny songbird. When Dogwood leaf buds open the bud scales part and the tiny beak emits a stream of green leaves.

Take a closer look at the flower buds of the Dogwood. Study the four bud scales, meeting at a cross-shaped suture, rising above the swollen spherical bud to a graceful cupola-like point, pale green in August, gradually becoming smoky gray during the long winter months. Watch as the bud scales separate, then slowly elongate at about the time the spring warblers return to their mountain nesting territories in late April.

The covering "scales" of the dogwood flower bud are actually the tips of the four large white petals (actually bracts) of the familiar dogwood blossom. Observe a dogwood "flower" next spring and notice the smoky gray indentations at the tip of each petal. This is the portion of the blossom which has been exposed to the elements since the previous August, a proclamation of the certainty of spring, nature's way of telling us that winter will not last forever. When you look at a dogwood flower bud, you are observing the tips of next spring's blossoms.

Many tree buds have more than the two or four covering scales found in Tulip Tree and Dogwood. Oak buds have many scales, overlapping in a spiral pattern like shingles on a roof. Oak buds are typically clustered near the tips of branches, where they are arranged in spiral patterns analogous to the arrangement of the scales on each bud.

Sugar Maple buds also have many scales, but they are arranged in staggered rows, the midpoint of one scale centered over the space between two lower scales. Sugar Maple buds are brown and conical, resembling inverted ice cream cones but without the ice cream.

A single scale covers the buds of some trees, such as willows. Black Willow buds are a smooth, dark, glossy red, looking as if they are wax-coated, and they are! The wax coating of many buds protects the embryonic tissues within from winter drying.

American Sycamore buds also are covered by a single scale, but don't go looking for them in September! Each bud is hidden under the expanded base of a leaf petiole, to be revealed only when the leaves of autumn are shed from the branches. Pluck a withered, yellowish-brown leaf from a Sycamore branch in mid October and view the cheerful, scarlet-tinged conical bud beneath.

In all trees, buds typically develop at the base of leaves, although they are not usually hidden by the leaf petiole as they are in the Sycamore. In fact, the distinctive combination of bud size, shape, and color along with the characteristic patterns of scar tissue left by shed leaves are important diagnostic tools used extensively in winter tree identification.

Many animals do feed on tree buds, particularly in the spring when the buds begin to swell. However, no great harm is done, for on a typical tree fully half the buds will not open in the season following their formation. If a squirrel nibbles away two or three future branches from a mature oak, the nearest surviving bud will simply open to fill the void. Trees can also produce extra, or "adventitious" buds in areas of severe injury.

Winter buds point toward the future, toward the silent explosion of life lying coiled within, which occurs each spring; the beauty of the form. Get in touch with a tree this winter, examine its finer details, and read the good news contained at the tip of each twig.