Naked resting bud morphologies and their taxonomic and geographic distributions in temperate, woody floras

What is it about?

Although bud scales are popularly thought to be an adaptation for winter dormancy, our inventory of taxa with naked buds shows that a remarkable number of hardy tree and shrub species exist that overwinter their buds without scales. We could not detect an association between naked buds and winter climate and conclude that resting bud structure is not necessarily a trait solely optimized for winter survival. Instead, it is more likely that rainfall during the summer limits the distribution of temperate species without bud scales.

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