always first, always strange

Quick, turn away, lest you be turned to stone. This Medusa of the leaf-buds belongs to red elderflower. It is always the first plant to leaf out in my yard, oft-times weeks before all the others. Have you ever seen anything so exotic from a simple leaf bud? Interestingly, the resulting leaves are quite ordinary. So you could call this the teen-age goth period for red elderflower.

red-berried elderflower leaf buds (Sambucus racemosa)