Unprecedented opportunities are now at hand to bridge the gap between forest seasonal dynamics, flux tower data and apparent temporal signals in vegetation indices. They pass through progress in observational systems at different scales: UAV and ground based LiDAR and multispectral sensors (phenocams) and growing constellations of (nano)satellites. These systems provide detailed structural and temporal information complementing more traditional destructive data collection campaigns, permanent forest plots and tree climbing. The unprecedented amounts of data obtained allow documenting detailed foliage dynamics at tree to landscape levels, and hence in turn to quantify the budget of matter and energy exchange between plants and the atmosphere. This budget can potentially become so resolute as to allow characterizing plant-plant or even within-plant interactions, and thus feed into next generation individual plant growth models (FSPMs). This talk will present some results of ongoing collaborative work in Central Africa and French Guyana, highlight some difficulties as well as intended research directions.