Jackie Tackles the Great Mysteries of the Universe, #3: Baby leaves

We all think baby animals are cute (most of the time. . . I suppose baby rodents who have not yet grown fur lean closer to "creepy" than to "cute," but we can agree on this general premise, I hope). Anthropologists have hypothesized that this cuteness is an evolutionary mechanism that permits greater survival of babies. It's hard to hate something that's cute, even when it spits, poops, and vomits all over you.

This spring, I've started to wonder why we don't apply this baby love to leaves. Do baby leaves just not inspire the same cuteness factor as baby humans?

After the long, long, long winter that we have had in upstate New York (my Georgia roots are still frozen), I have gloried in the emergence of buds and now, finally, leaves of the trees. The baby leaves are adorable. I keep wondering on my long walks to school, full of baby oak leaves, baby maple leaves, and baby pine cones, why I haven't seen more photos of these tiny bundles of joy in screensavers and other generic nature photos.

Surely I was merely ignorant of the devoted following of baby leaf peepers (parallels of the devoted autumnal leaf peepers in the Northeast, who vacate their city dwellings in mass droves to glimpse real life trees in the fall). I rushed home to google "baby leaves," and see what adorable photos came up that I could coo over for the next ten minutes.

Of all of the google images that loaded on the first page, only a handful included pictures of baby leaves on trees (please take a moment to admire the scientific integrity of the short study I conducted. . . Thank you. Back to the article).The rest of the photos consisted primarily of--gasp!--baby lettuce, read to be eaten! And even small children, some with leaves around them-- presumably not up for eating.

My conclusion is that baby leaves are more attractive to grown-up plants than they are to adult humans. Mature trees likely think nothing of the cuteness of our human babies. Big eyes! Pshh. Where are the bud remnants making way for the tiny leaf veins? That's where it's at.

The only problem with my conclusion is that I still find baby leaves cute. Maybe other humans agree with me, and we have simply all done a poor job communicating our love of baby leaves. Or, perhaps I am part tree on my father's side. I'll have to look into that.

Baby Pinecones and Needles (I include this irresistably adorable photo to sway you to the side of baby plant love)