In the first part, I quoted all the scripture passages that mention buds. In this one, I shall muse a little about the botany of buds. Here's the Wikipedia article on buds, which probably tells you more about buds than you want to know.
A bud is growth tissue that hasn't grown yet, so it is a promise of new things. Woody plants, especially, do not grow like we do. A human (and vertebrate animals in general) more or less just expands in size as it grows. (The proportions aren't quite exact -- babies have bigger heads, and smaller legs and feet, than an adult, proportionally speaking.) But a tree or a bush doesn't do that. There is a special type of tissue, called meristematic tissue, which accomplishes the creation of new cells for such a plant. Meristematic tissue is localized, not distributed evenly. As a result, most of the growth of a twig is in length, as the meristematic tissue in the terminal bud keeps making new cells, and moving on out as it does. There is some growth in thickness, due to other sets of meristematic cells, but most of the growth is upwards. If you pound a nail in a tree in 2007, and come back in 2010, the nail will be the same distance from the ground, because the tree grows in length at its extremities, rather than simply expanding.
Buds have meristematic tissue in them. When they add new cells, and these cells enlarge and mature, they can become more twig, a leaf, or a flower. The buds in the photo produced blueberry flowers, which reproduced and developed into blueberries. They were good! But they weren't there when the photo was taken.
All of the Biblical references to buds refer, in some way, to new growth. I hope that I am still growing, spiritually and emotionally, if not physically. Perhaps I am a soul in bud.
