Are its roots so to speak in horticulture?
If so, is it in reference to pruning?
Sure sounds like it to me–to nip in the bud would be to eliminate before it can propagate.
And Barney Fife used to say it alot on the Andy Griffith Show.
[nasally voice}
“Ang, you gotta nip it…nip it in the bud.”
[/nasally voive]
Thanks for the responses. That is pretty much what I assumed.
I am not much of a plant person and have virtually no experience with pruning, but it seems odd to “nip it IN the bud”. When pruning shouldn’t you nip it below the bud?
Am I just being too literal?
Thanks again.
Hibbins, Nip it “in” the bud has a better rhythm to it that “below” the bud. I suspect that might be the reason why it is in and not below.
Hubbins, for some reason, the code doesn’t work in the subect area of our posts. Something I found out the hard way. 
I loved the Barney Fife reference, by the way! Really made me chuckle. I could just picture him waving his one-bullet gun around!
Thanks!
Quasi
Quasimodem,
I became embarrassingly aware of that shortly after submitting the OP. One more example of why you shouldn’t make assumptions. :o
Then I though, “I can just edit it”. Nice idea, unfortunately I have found that I can’t do that either. :eek:
I believe the “in” part refers to time, not location. That is, nip it while it is still in the bud stage before it goes to the flower stage.
The expression doesn’t refer to pruning where unwanted material is removed after it has developed, instead it refers to stopping the material developing in the first place.
When attempting to train plants to a certain shape or ensure the size of fruit by removing excess blossoms the standard practice is to remove the bud before it begins to develop. This stops the plant wasting energy by growing unwanted branches and blossoms. The easiest way to do this is to pinch the bud out with the fingers.
And just FYI, when pruning most plants the practice is to remove the branch just above a bud.
OH! <slaps forhead>
That makes so much more sense.
Thanks Lemur866 and Blake. Definitely the victim of a misguided idea of pruning compounded by taking what I was seeing too literally.
Its not so much to stop the plant from wasting energy, its simply that all plants grow from the “end” tissue. That is, the tissue at the end of roots, at the end of shoots, and where buds are. i.e. if you had a two foot high plant with a branch at one foot high, come back in a year and that branch will be the same height off the ground, but it will be longer and the plant will be taller because it grew at the ends.
Does this make sense? Clearly i should never write a plant biology textbook… The point is, but cutting off a bud or the tip of a shoot/branch, you cut off the part that can grow and the plant no longer does.
The term you’re looking for is dominant apical meristem. Plants have numerous other meristems, mostly nestled in beside leaves and often under the bark as well.
Because plants have all those other meristems removal of the tip of a branch will not stop the branch growing, instead simply changing its direction of growth as the meristem behind the cut takes over growth. Often several of the lower meristems take over and the branch bushes out becoming even larger and more vigorous than if it hadn’t been pruned at all. This is an effect actively sought with some pruning techniques.
Bud removal is quite different to pruning in that it prevents the development of all other meristems along that line. The shoot never gets a chance to develop. The use of bud removal is not to stop the plant growing, it is to force it to grow in a certain shape. With tomatoes for example the common practice is to remove lateral branches to train the plant to a trellis and excess flower buds to promote larger fruit. Waiting until a branchlet has developed leaves or a flower has openend and then removing it removes considerable amounts of sugars/starch, not to mention many nutrients that tend to be concentrated in actively growing shoots. A real waste of energy, fertiliser and money. With woody plants like roses it also takes a lot more effort to remove a branchlet after it has hardened and developed thorns. Far more efficient to ‘nip it in the bud’.