Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, but not this year. At least in a lot of places. Because for reasons no one seems to understand many places in North America are reporting no acorns at all. I'm not talking reduced numbers of acorns or few acorns. I'm talking about zero acorns:
The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.
But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.
"I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," he said. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before." (Brigid Schulte, WaPo)
It's not a catastrophe (unless you're a squirrel), at least not yet. Some species of oak (and there are dozens) produce acorns only every two or four years or on some other cycle. And oaks live a long time, many for hundreds of years. One acorn is enough to produce a mighty oak. So we're not talking about oak extinction here.
But stories like this still give me the willies. This may be just some kind of normal variation, but it could be harbinger of deeper problems. What kind of deeper problems? I don't know. But our world is now interconnected so tightly that the acorn problem could be the result of some other way the world has changed and it could in turn change a part of the world we haven't even considered. Who knows what a bunch of starving squirrels will do?
I'm a city boy and know little about birds and trees and other parts of the natural world. Except I know enough to know that my life depends on them, even if I don't know exactly how.
Environment
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Well, here in East Texas we are having a bumper crop of acorns. I've never seen so many. The ground under some trees is completely covered with acorns. I speculate its because we just had a year of normal rainfall after several years of drought, and the trees are making up for lost time.
Some years are good for crops, some years are a bust. I bet its just one of those bust years for Virginia. Tough on the squirrels, but probably not a sign of global doom.
Posted by: Jim | December 2, 2008 4:06 PM
We have acorns in central Washington State. But it is more than a bit odd that there would be any 'zero acorns' or 'zero hickory nuts' regions.
Posted by: oscarzoalaster | December 2, 2008 4:38 PM
If it will make you feel better, the squirrels on our Quad are in danger of obesity-related diseases. I see them staggering around with more acorns than they can handle. And, french fries and cookies too. They're cute, and students like to feed them.
Posted by: george.wiman | December 2, 2008 4:41 PM
Our Texas Garden Guru Neil Sperry said the other day that all nut trees (in this country at least) especially pecans and oaks, tend to have one very productive year and one lean or even non productive year. All the trees in a given area seem to match up their schedules. So, I bet the no acorn places will have plenty next year.
Posted by: Betsy | December 2, 2008 4:44 PM
probably a lot of storm at the time pollination took place in the Virginia area. We have a small orchard and when a storm comes through and knocks out the blooms, they knock out the whole crop.
The good thing is that next year you'll probably have a bumper crop as the trees haven't had to put all that energy into growing nuts...alot of trees go through a boom and bust cycle...likely last year had a big crop and this one would have been weaker and got an extra knock-out punch from the weather.
Posted by: barn owl | December 2, 2008 4:47 PM
Odd that there are no acorns in Virginia. Here in central Maryland I've been lifting them from the rain gutters in double handfulls. The squirrels are so fat they can hardly cross the road. My Dad says the oaks only produce in alternate years and in fact I remember having very few acorns last year. We still had more than enough squirrels.
Posted by: nothere | December 2, 2008 5:27 PM
The technical term is "mast year":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_year
Posted by: _Arthur | December 2, 2008 5:36 PM
It's not a catastrophe (unless you're a squirrel), at least not yet.
Deer and black bears also rely on acorns. Bears need the protein to help them get through the winter.
Posted by: C. Corax | December 2, 2008 6:57 PM
Well. We got both squirrels and acorns in W. Tennessee. Big ones on both. The squirrels here take my cats on regularly in fights. They want to eat them and the squirrels want the right to just be left alone.
My son was home for college break and told me to come quick I wouldnt believe it. Sure enough I run to the back door and look at the back yard. One of those fluffy acorn crackers and a friend were chasing one of my smaller cats across the yard. Its one of those wish you had a video camera things. I am ready for it next time because no one would believe it.
Revere, there has been a drought in E. TN, VA, GA, SC, NC and MD for about the last 4 or 5 years. If the trees dont bud due to lack of water they dont make the acorns. If they dont get it during their building phase they drop the immature acorn and try to last the season.
Its been raining like crazy there since mid-August up and down the E. Seaboard. Snow too. I looked at the drought report and its just about broken even in N. Georgia. So how about a revisit in the springtime on this one and lets see what we get. I would be very interested if the trees DONT bud out and more, what they do in the Fall.
My cousin is the dept head of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon. He has his doubts about the levels they are talking.
http://fw.oregonstate.edu/About%20Us/personnel/faculty/edge.htm
He is also a forester. Natural cycles can be interrupted anywhere along the way with a naturally occurring event. Ice storms, high winds blowing the buds off, anything that stresses a tree. But he also doubted that the lack of acorns would be as pronounced as is suggested. The mast year thing does happen but its rarely a tree event. He cited the plague of rats that follow a "mast year" event for bamboo. They feed on the flowers and you dont get acorns, you get millions of rats.
Here is the reference to that lack of acorns study.
http://it.moldova.org/stiri/eng/168983/
Posted by: M. Randolph Kruger | December 2, 2008 7:32 PM
It's because all the acorns were out committing voter fraud. At least I think that's what Rush said. The radio had a lot of static.
Posted by: Algerine | December 2, 2008 10:46 PM
The cycles of nature can be interesting.
Last year was a mast year here in the Sierra foothills. I have about a 1/4 acre lot with 22 oak trees on it. I had to celar up about 300 pounds of acorns last year. I didn't get all of them, Now I have hundreds of weedy oak saplings to deal with.
This season, hardly any acorns at all.
Cycles, cycles, cycles..,
Posted by: neil | December 2, 2008 10:53 PM
in the parklands of se minnesota and forests of nw wisconsin where i spend lots of my free time 2008 acorns are very sparse but squirrels, bear and deer are doing ok raiding fields of black sunflower.
Posted by: hjmler | December 3, 2008 2:30 AM
I live in Michigan, I haven't seen a acorn in at least 3 years. I asked my son who takes long walks to see if he had seen any. There just aren't any around. I noticed that our squirrels were much thinner than they had been. After the damage they have done to my gardens, I wouldn't mourn the loss of any of the squirrels, though.
Posted by: DebP | December 3, 2008 7:43 AM
Red oaks only have acorns every two years. White oaks every year.
If the reds have a bad winter or are stressed, they will lose the acorn bud for the next fall. White oaks lose their acorns every year and therefor are less pron to missing harvests.
We solved our lack of acorns problem by planting both kinds of oaks so we have acorns every year with bumper crops every two years.
Posted by: Gindy | December 3, 2008 1:55 PM
gypsy moths have killed thousands of oak trees here in western maryland..very little acorns here..
Posted by: pauls lane | December 6, 2008 10:33 AM