卯 holds five to seven in the morning and, in the year, the spring equinox — day and night equal, the sun rising due east. It's yin wood, the counterpart to 寅's tree: 寅 is the trunk, 卯 is the branch and the vine.
That contrast is the whole of it: not height but spread. Its strategy isn't going through but round, up and into the gap. The tradition never rated that second-best, because after the typhoon it's the big tree that's down and the grass that remains.
Where 卯 sits in a chart, that area is reached through relationships, through softness and through time; pushing hard tends to spoil it. 卯 is also associated with the gate, meaning a way in and out — a good deal of what happens in this position is brought to you by someone else.
