April - young Hornbeam leaves

The hornbeam leaves are exploding out of their buds at the moment!

As the leaves of the hornbeam unfurl a lovely lime green, you can see the long silvery hairs along the ridges of the upper surface and along the toothed serrations of the margin and the deep undulations of the leaf surface seen in the youngest leaves in particular. 

Last year's twig is running from right to left, just ending in a gap between the leaves, and it is the scales from the terminal bud that you can see to the far left, and the new young side shoot from inside a side bud that you can see wiggling from left to right, with the lovely maroon colour just developing as it is exposed to light or air. 

This is a closeup showing how that young shoot in the side bud is extending outwards:

and here is a close-up, of the terminal bud again extending even further out, with the beautiful maroon of the young shoot, and again intermittent scales persisting between the new leaves: