With a record setting high of 66 degrees Fahrenheit on Christmas Day in New York City, and a high of 72 the day before, this winter has felt bizarrely warm. While some visitors from the West Coast may be happy basking in warm sunny days throughout December and early January, these patterns are affecting the trees and other species in these places. They become tricked into thinking that it’s springtime, and start to bud.

Many plants, including fruit trees, will only flower once per year, so if they accidentally flower in January, far ahead of schedule, that’s it for the fruit crop of that year. The warm weather will also likely maintain populations of bugs that herbivorize plants, giving them yet another challenge to face before the winter actually sets in and they must protect themselves from the cold weather.

I had noticed buds before on campus, usually in the springtime, but this winter I’ve noticed them more in the past few days and weeks (Figure 1). January 10 ^th , 2016, had a high of 60 degrees Fahrenheit and rainy in Princeton, New Jersey, and January 11 ^th , 2016, was a high of 34 and sunny. These sudden changes in temperature cannot be good for plants, since it is not what they are evolved to in their life history strategies to deal with.

So I thought that these fuzzy buds I saw in many places over campus must be some result of these unseasonably high temperatures, and on January 11 ^th I collected some to investigate. But a (large) number of Google searches later, it turns out that these buds are from Magnolia trees, whose buds form before winter hits and last until they flower in the spring!

I still investigated the structure of these buds. The outside of the buds are covered in these little hairs, and I managed to snap two different photos of them with the Foldscope and the camera on my iPhone 6s (Figure 2a, 2b).

The first picture here managed to be of a larger area of the bud, while the second got some really neat details on the structures, most likely at the edge of the bud. It leaves me wondering what these things are protecting against, since they do seem to be some outer layer of protection.

The inside of the bud was layered, and when I split open the outer shell the soft innards came out in a stack before peeling easily apart like a Russian doll (Figure 3).

I had never heard before that buds can survive the winter the way that Magnolia buds do, and I cannot wait to see their flowers in the spring. If the weather continues to get warmer, I wonder what will happen to them, since they’re problem will not be budding too early, but instead will be losing their buds or fully flowering if the weather gets too warm too quickly. The effects of climate change on many plant species remains to be seen, but I found it fascinating to learn about the Magnolia buds and get a closer look at their hairy outside through the Foldscope.

I conducted this project as part of Professor Pringle’s EEB321 class at Princeton University.