It’s the middle of the night. You awaken with a start to pitch darkness, a little lost and surprised, more than a bit disoriented. You could be anywhere and it could be anytime. You glance at the small clock at your bedside and realize that its only 4:30 a.m. It’s early. You still have a couple of hours until you HAVE to get up. Reoriented and reassured, you pull the covers up to your chin, snuggle deeply back into your spot and resume the refreshing sleep of the recently-back-to-bed.
Dormant plants in the winter can’t be much different. They too are occasionally awakened from deep slumber by a January thaw, or a string of sun-on-your-face warm days that remind all living things that Spring is just around the corner, somewhere. The plant too is disoriented and surprised. Is it time to get up? Is it time to wake up the buds and start pumping sap up from the roots? The plant glances at its bedside clock – the sun – and gages the time until it must arise from dormancy. It’s hardly mid-January. The plant doesn’t have to rise and shine until at least the 2nd week of April. Reoriented and reassured, it hits the snooze alarm and goes back for more rest.
By comparison, a dormant tree stored in a darkened basement or windowless garage as no sense of the time of year other than its own marvelous internal clock. It knows that it certainly must be mid-February but it has no way to verify it. So it lays half-awake, half-asleep, afraid that it will oversleep. The rest it gets is fitful, the final awakening abrupt.
I have no scientific evidence to back this up. It’s just a hunch.
