The Forestry Forum

Do trees store their energy for the winter in their buds, branches, or roots?  Or is it somewhere else?

The tree takes energy, sugar, and decides whether somebody needs it and if so sends it there to be used for energy to run some life process otherwise it decides whether to send it into storage in all the places you mentioned and more in the form of starch. Rays and twigs contain a lot of starch. Deer  seem to be on top of that. Or the tree can take that same molecule of sugar and twist it another way and make cellulose. Where it can convert starch back to energy, sugar. The tree cannot convert cellulose back to energy. Same building block, the tree decides whether to use it for labor now or later or whether to use it as a structural component, and it poops oxygen. I'm feeling inferior now  :D.

Scratch off some twig bark. If you see green chlorophyll that is how the tree makes energy when it has no leaves, through the bark. Much less dessicating when water is tied up during the winter. The tree is not strictly on canned goods through the winter. If sap can flow, its working.

Got me interested  :D This is pretty good;
http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/25/3/274.full.pdf

 I learned something  today  thanks Don P  :)

Cambium that either becomes xylem or phloem or more cambium which produces the cells.   kinda sorta...

In the roots