April 2016: Common beech [Fagus silvatica] (Rotbuche): You can still see the buds' involucral leaves (brown), the "freshly hatched" leaves (1 day old) and already a blossom bud: Some of our beeches already unfolded their leaves although we had some rather cool days. Usually this happened in the first week of May! This is more than three weeks earlier. But interestingly enough not all the plants' phenological stages are three weeks earlier (this can perfectly be seen in the SIMR diagram) as they answer differently to less snow cover, warmer January + February, less freezing days, drier March, etc. It seems that this winter's conditions caused a very short hibernal rest and a very early development of the beeches' buds .
