Phenology Walk – April 11th, 2025
During my cloudy walk on April 11th, there was not much apparent phenological signs of Spring. I first went over to the Norway Maple in front of Williams and noticed that there was no change in the phenophases as marked before. None of the buds on the tree were breaking, so there were no leaves, flowers, or fruits growing. This was different than the Red Maple I observed just a few hundred feet over in front of Old Mill. Almost all the buds on the tree were breaking and red leaves were starting to grow. They were less than 25% of full size, but were apparent in their growth. I didn’t observe any flowers or signs of fruit growing. I then made my way over to the White Oak. This was in the same phenophase as the Red Maple, but to a much lesser degree. Some of the buds were breaking, but not all and there were some leaves growing. This tree was much smaller, so it had less buds and not every bud had a leaf growing from it. The Sugar Maple was in the same phenophase as the Norway Maple. No signs of breaking buds or leaves, fruit, or flowers growing. Lastly, the Red Oak only had a few broken leaf buds, about 3 to 10. Otherwise, all other phenophases were not apparent as of this day. On the National Phenology Network website, I found an article that talks about how artificial light affected phenological phases in trees, causing them to break their buds about 9 days earlier than trees not surrounded by artificial lighting. Obviously, climate change is a big factor in the shift of phenophases, but even things that don’t relate to climate change could be affecting the growth of the trees around campus. Most of these trees are surrounded by street lamps, which could explain why most of the trees are in different phenophases.
Norway Maple
Red Maple
White Oak
Sugar Maple
Red Oak