This week I got to go back to my tree and check on its phenological progress. This trip into centennial was much less slippery hat it had been the past few trips. In comparing the two it is very apparent that spring is here, even as I’m writing this, it’s 60 degrees and sunny. Centennial as a whole seems to be waking up and showing their hues. However, that does not seem to be the case for my specific tree. In revisiting the baby beech, it does not seem to have made much phenological progress. The buds still appear to be a pretty dull brown color with no apparent green. However, this does not seem to be the trend for other beeches around. Some of the surrounding beech trees appear to be on the verge of flowering. It seems as though the buds of these beech trees are beginning to have green and purple/red replace the brown on the scales. This leads me to wonder if it is just my beech that has stunted growth. I would hypothesize that a contributing cause to the lack of growth could be the location of the beech. Not so much where it is in the woods but more of its shade coverage. The baby beech is located right between two bigger trees which provide a substantial amount of shade to the tree at most hours of the day. This lack of sun exposure could definitely reduce the speed or the trees general ability to flower. Zooming out, nothing much else has happened to the tree. In fact, the remaining dead leaves from the first blog post still remain on the tree and the bark remains extremely scaly for young beech.
