Up Close and Personal With Our Buds

Recently, when my husband and I were out in the vineyard, beginning our vine rubberband task, my husband noted that on some nodes, there were two buds. In the somewhat fuzzy photo at the left, there is one bud that is clearly larger than the smaller bud that has a bit of cottony stuff.
The larger bud, we assume is the dormant bud. The dormant bud has many names:

• compound bud
• winter bud
• eye
• latent bud

Although the dormant bud looks like just one bud, it is really comprised of 3 buds, the primary, secondary and tertiary buds, that is why it is also called the compound bud.¹

Nature is really wonderful, when you think about this compound bud. During spring, if the primary bud should be killed due to an untimely frost or other events, the secondary bud can takeover. The secondary bud may also have inflorescence (be fruitful), and keeping the grapevine alive by sending up a shoot is always a good thing. There is still one more chance that the grapevine has in case of failure of the secondary bud. The tertiary bud is standing by.

One of the seminal references that other texts refer to was written in 1974 by Charlotte Pratt called Vegetative anatomy in cultivated grapes, A review. This is one of the reading materials provided by the U.C. Davis online course. Not only does it give a detailed look at the various parts of the grapevine, it also provides a glossary at the end of the review. It's a great reference to have. In reading the paper, I came across a word orthostichies (what?), the glossary defines it as being: a sequence of leaves one above another on a stem.
Who knew?
References:
1. Pratt, C., Vegetative anatomy in cultivated grapes, A review, American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 1974, 25:131-150.