We study 'bubbling up' on nodal curves in the style of Knudsen's proof that M g,n+1 is the universal curve over Mg,n, in the presence of a (logarithmic) vector field on the nodal curve. We propose a two-step bubbling up procedure. The first step is simply Knudsen stabilization with the additional data to keep track of. The second step ensures that the vector field doesn't vanish at the inserted point. These operations work in families.As an application, we prove that the Losev-Manin compactification of the space of configurations of n points on P 1 \{0, ∞} modulo scaling degenerates isotrivially to a compactification of the space of configurations of n points on A 1 modulo translation. The latter is related to the compactification constructed by Ziltener and Mau-Woodward, but allows the marked points to coincide, making it a G n−1 a -variety, which mirrors the fact that the Losev-Manin space is toric. Its combinatorics is dual to that of the space of phylogenetic trees of Billera-Holmes-Vogtmann. The degeneration is compatible with the actions of G n−1 m and G n−1 a in the sense that these actions fit together globally.