Welcoming Spring: Japanese Maple in Spring Nature Study of New Leaves

I mentioned back in March that I wanted to chronicle spring leaves emerging on our Japanese Maple tree. I was expecting it to take a couple of weeks, but the entire process lasted over a month. The above pictures was taken April 1st, and the buds had not changed much since my Spring Science post from March 23rd.

This picture is from April 5th. The buds are elongated a bit, and you can tell that they are really leaves curled very tightly.

By April 8th, the leaves didn’t really look like buds at all.

April 13th was the next time I had my act together enough to take a picture. The leaves are already beginning to unfurl. This picture reminds me a bit of a butterfly that has just emerged from its chrysalis.

I was expecting the leaves to unfurl suddenly, but they were still mostly closed April 20th.

Things started to happen quickly April 21st, when the leaves opened suddenly to reveal these little seeds. At least I think they are seeds – anybody know for sure?

The seeds (?) were gone by the afternoon of April 22nd!

And the leaves were fully emerged by April 25th.