budding

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Being in an early developmental stage: a gallery with the works of budding artists.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In botany, the putting forth or producing of buds. In the lower cryptogams the term is applied to a form of growth and reproduction, a modification of fission, in which the new cell swells out at the side of the parent cell, increases in size, and at length becomes detached. See yeast.
2. n. In zoology, gemmation; a mode of asexual reproduction in animals analogous to budding in plants.
3. n. In horticulture, a process, allied to grafting, for growing a different variety of fruit or plant from a given stock by transferring a bud with a little of the woody tissue behind it to a cleft in the bark of the stock. Adhesion takes place between the cambium layers or new-growth tissue of the two, assuring the life and growth of the bud. Many kinds of fruit are propagated in this way, as well as roses and other plants.
4. Producing buds: as, a budding tree.
5. Being in the condition of a bud; figuratively, being in an early stage of growth; being at the entrance of a period of life, a career, etc.: as, a budding orator.

Wiktionary

1. adj. That is beginning to develop.
2. v. present participle of bud.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act or process of producing buds.
2. n. (Biol.) A process of asexual reproduction, in which a new organism or cell is formed by a protrusion of a portion of the animal or vegetable organism, the bud thus formed sometimes remaining attached to the parent stalk or cell, at other times becoming free; gemmation. See Hydroidea.
3. n. The act or process of ingrafting one kind of plant upon another stock by inserting a bud under the bark.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. reproduction of some unicellular organisms (such as yeasts) by growth and specialization followed by the separation by constriction of a part of the parent
2. adj. beginning to develop