budding

Pluralbuddings (some meanings)

1. 1
   adjective

   At an early stage of development; just beginning to grow or take shape.

   The workshop is aimed at budding novelists who have yet to finish a first draft.

   Their budding friendship was tested when she moved across the country.

   Similaraspiring, fledgling, emerging, developing, burgeoning

   Oppositeestablished

   Note

   The garden image turned on people and their plans. It sits before the noun, most naturally before a word for a role, as in a budding deejay or budding home stylists, and it marks promise that is real but not yet proven. A friendship or a talent can be budding too. It is not compared: something is budding or it is not.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of bud.

   By late February the magnolias along the avenue were already budding.

   Yeast cells multiply by budding, each new cell pinching off from its parent.

   Note

   The -ing form doubles the final d: bud, budding. After be it shows buds forming (the magnolias were budding), and as a gerund it names the process, which in biology also covers the way yeast and other simple organisms multiply, each new cell pinching off from its parent. When gardeners mean grafting, they usually use the noun for the grafting method.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The process by which a plant develops buds.

   A mild winter brought unusually early budding on the cherry trees.

   Heavy budding in the orchard this year promises a good apple harvest.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   A method of grafting in which a single bud from one plant is joined to the rootstock or bark of another.

   Budding is usually done in late summer, when the bark lifts easily from the wood.

   Rose growers favor budding because one bud from a prized variety can start a whole new plant.

   Note

   What sets it apart from other grafting is economy: a single bud does the work of a whole cutting. The bud is usually slipped beneath the rootstock's bark through a T-shaped cut and tied in place until it takes, and the method is also called bud grafting. The plant that grows from it is a budding as well.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A plant produced by joining a single scion bud to a rootstock or to bark.

   Each budding in the trial plot was tagged with the number of its parent tree.

   The buddings from the best parent tree outgrew the seedlings planted beside them.

   Note

   Here the word names a plant, much as seedling does, and counts like one: one budding, a block of buddings. The contrast with seedlings is the point for growers. The Rubber Journal in 1956 reports that buddings from one parent tree agree in habit and character, while all buddings share features that set them apart from trees raised from seed.

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