Among gardeners, the term eye is a common synonym for types of buds on woody plants. The term “sleeping eye” causes frowns among beginners in hobby gardening. This guide sheds light on the darkness with an understandable definition and clear explanations.
What does “sleeping eye” mean in the garden area?
A sleeping eye refers to a dormant bud in woody plants, which is often hidden under the bark. It remains viable for years and serves as a reserve to restore dead plant parts. Activation occurs through increased sap pressure, e.g. through pruning.
Sleeping eye – explanation of terms for home gardeners
When gardeners talk about an eye, they mean the growing point of a plant, which botanists call the bud. This is the embryonic development of a shoot, a leaf or a flower. Which part of the plant an eye actually turns into can usually only be seen during the growth period. As a result, the term sleeping eye is a synonym for sleeping bud and results in the following definition:
Sleeping eye refers to aresting bud system, which a woody plant creates in its young stage at the same time as active buds. Sleeping eyes are usually located under the bark and are hardly or not visible.
The special property of sleeping eyes is that they can remain viable for many years. Their only function is to restore lost or dead organs, such as branches, twigs or even an entire main trunk. To put it bluntly, sleeping eyes are theiron reserve of bushes and trees.
How do you bring a sleeping eye to life?
A sleeping eye is tiny because it does not benefit from the sap flow within a plant. As the growth law of tip support tells us, the nutrients tend primarily towards the top buds of a shoot. Active buds located below the tip buds are given a smaller proportion of reserve substances and accordingly sprout more cautiously. Nutrients are available for dormant buds when parts of the plant above them fall away.
A sleeping eye is only activated when the sap pressure increases at that point. If you cut off a shoot just above a dormant bud, the plant will sprout vigorously. It is thanks to this process that most trees do not stop growing even after radical pruning, such as rejuvenation pruning.
To ensure that an apple tree develops a round crown with sap, remove all shoots except for the central shoot with three leading branches. Shorten the leading branches so that their tip buds are at the same height. Overall, the scaffolding branches should form an angle of 90 -120°.
