One of the first sights of primavera (spring) is the odd bocciolo (bud) growing on bushes and trees.
Bocciolo is a masculine noun whose plural form is boccioli. You can see which direct and indirect articles it takes below:
- il bocciolo = the bud
- i boccioli = the buds
- un bocciolo = a bud
- dei boccioli = (some) buds
Sotto casa mia c’è un albero pieno di boccioli.
In front of my house there is a tree covered in buds.
The expression mettere i boccioli means to bud or to put out buds.
A bocciolo di rosa is what Italians call a rosebud, whereas taste buds are known as boccioli gustativi.
A related term from which bocciolo actually derives is boccio, and it too means bud. If you say that something is in boccio, it is in the process of budding or blooming.
Bisogna proteggere il fiore quando è in boccio.
The flower must be protected when it is blooming.
Another possible synonym is bottone which actually means button.
Some related terms include foglia (leaf), germoglio (sprout) and virgulto (offshoot).
Heather Broster is a graduate with honours in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, proficient in English and Italian, as well as Japanese, Welsh, and French to varying degrees of fluency. Originally from Toronto, Heather has resided in various countries, notably Italy for a period of six years. Her primary focus lies in the fields of language acquisition, education, and bilingual instruction.
