Flower buds have not yet bloomed into a full-size flower.

In botany, a bud is an undeveloped shoot and normally occurs in the axil of a leaf or at the tip of the stem. Once formed, a bud may remain for some time in a dormant condition, or it may form a shoot immediately.

The buds of many woody plants, especially in temperate or cold climates, are protected by a covering of modified leaves called scales which tightly enclose the more delicate parts of the bud. Many bud scales are covered by a gummy substance which serves as added protection. When the bud develops, the scales may enlarge somewhat but usually just drop off, leaving on the surface of the growing stem a series of horizontally-elongated scars. By means of these scars one can determine the age of any young branch, since each year's growth ends in the formation of a bud, the formation of which produces an additional group of bud scale scars. Continued growth of the branch causes these scars to be obliterated after a few years so that the total age of older branches cannot be determined by this means.

In many plants scales are not formed over the bud, which is then called a naked bud. The minute underdeveloped leaves in such buds are often excessively hairy. Such naked buds are found in shrubs like the Sumac and Viburnums and in herbaceous plants . In many of the latter, buds are even more reduced, often consisting of undifferentiated masses of cells in the axils of leaves. A head of cabbage (see Brassica) is an exceptionally large terminal bud, while Brussels sprouts are large lateral buds.

Since buds are formed in the axils of leaves, their distribution on the stem is the same as that of leaves. There are alternate, opposite, and whorled buds, as well as the terminal bud at the tip of the stem. In many plants buds appear in unexpected places: these are known as adventitious buds.

Often it is possible to find a bud in a remarkable series of gradations of bud scales. In the buckeye, for example, one may see a complete gradation from the small brown outer scale through larger scales which on unfolding become somewhat green to the inner scales of the bud, which are remarkably leaf-like. Such a series suggests that the scales of the bud are in truth leaves, modified to protect the more delicate parts of the plant during unfavorable periods.

Within zoology

The term bud (as in budding) is used by analogy within zoology as well, where it refers to an outgrowth from the body which develops into a new individual. It is a form of asexual reproduction limited to animals or plants of relatively simple structure. In this process a portion of the wall of the parent cell softens and pushes out. The protuberance thus formed enlarges rapidly while at this time the nucleus of the parent cell divides (see: mitosis, meiosis). One of the resulting nuclei passes into the bud, and then the bud is cut off from its parent cell and the process is repeated. Often the daughter cell will begin to bud before it becomes separated from the parent, so that whole colonies of adhering cells may be formed. Eventually cross walls cut off the bud from the original cell.