@seedfork
You can get a rough estimate of how many buds a particular fan will have by looking at the size of the fan at the soil surface - that is its width. The wider the fan (for a particular cultivar) the more buds. The graph below shows the relationship between the width of fans (their size) and the number of buds for one particular cultivar. Every cultivar will have its own (different) relationship between the size of the fans and the number of buds on their scapes.
Fans that are too small (in width) do not flower. On the figure they have zero buds.
I do not know if the relationship is estimated better by the size of the fan or the size of its crown, but it is easier to measure fan widths. I measure the fan width in its longest direction. One inch is approximately 2.5 cm.
