Are Your Buds Bursting Yet?  

Updates from schoolyards in  New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maryland:

New Hampshire: 

• Mostly trees are beginning to flower here in Northeast Kingdom.  Norway maples and box elder are the trees that have begun puffing.  I had to take on some more trees this year because 6 were cut down!  So I now have what I think are beech trees. 

-MaryAnn Postans, Hanover,New Hampshire

• Here in Hollis, NH the red maples have budded along with the white and yellow birches, red oak and shagbark hickory are very puffy. This stand of trees gets full sunlight for most of the day as they are east facing and there are no obstructions to shade them.

-Maryanne Rotelli, Hollis, NH

 Massachusetts:

• very slow here in central mass but we're doing a tues and fri visit since it is finally warming up!

-JoAnn Mossman, Ashburnham, Ma.

• Very puffy but not out yet in Ashburnham

-Kate Bennett, Ashburnham, Ma.

• Birch leaves are out, the maple are very puffy, and the oaks are puffy.

-Melanie McCracken, Groton-Dunstable, Ma.

• As of last week, there was only one tree with buds almost ready to “pop.”I am sure that there will be more changes this week. Based upon the data from last year, we are at least two weeks behind, but we have made four observations so far. We will be doing our next observation tomorrow.

-Chuck Skillings, Holden, Ma. 

• We went out again today. The black cherry was leafed out last week. The red maple has flowered and leaves are very close! The speckled alder also has some leaves. And we have our first Tulip Poplar leaf today- tiny!

- Jane Lucia, Northampton, Ma.

•  We have been going out once a week since before Easter vacation; No buds yet! We had a couple of trees "puffy" . We will go out again this week, but it is AP testing week, so many of my students are not in classes. Also, someone decided to prune about 4 of our study trees; and they removed our tags on the rest. The branches were cut so high that we cannot even access a branch on them. : (  I may be down to 6 trees afterall is said and done.

-Carol Bruell, Chelmsford, Ma.

• only the cultivated species, the Crab apples are fully leafed out, and did so over vacation.  Cherry trees started last week, Maples, have flowered,  hawthorns and hornbeam are getting ready.

-Lise Letellier, Holyoke, Ma.

• We actually mostly missed our leaves opening - happened over break. :-(

- Kira Jewett, Holyoke, Ma.

In Springfield our birch and black cherry have burst. The sassafras has flowers but not leaves. The others range from still closed to puffy.

-Carol Rosenthal, Springfield, Ma.

• The students and I have been discussing the fact that this is the first year we didn't "miss" bud out because it happened over Easter/spring break.

-Maria Blewitt, Reading, Ma.

Maryland: 

• Here in Baltimore, we missed it! It occurred before, during and after the week of the spring break. We had multiple-day residential trips those days so we missed the opportunity. We visited the park last week and Trees are already green. However, we still have our data for fall. 

-Willy Herrera, Baltimore, Maryland

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Photo taken from: Google: Reference: Beagle Project http://www.beagleproject.org/pdf/phenophases.pdf
as found by teacher, MaryAnn Postans.