By Pat Dray
The Garden Spot
Pat Dray
A friend of mine recently asked me why my driveway was covered with acorns. Unfortunately, the windshield of my car would also like to know.
It’s not an illusion – we are experiencing what is called a “mast year.” Mast is a term used for the fruit of forest trees and shrubs such as acorns and other nuts. It comes from an old English term that referred to the nuts that were used to fatten up domestic pigs. A few years ago, there were so many acorns in my yard that the folks who own Walden Hill Farm came and collected them for their pigs to eat.
Mast years are cyclical, generally occurring every two to five years, depending on the species. The oak trees of North America produce more nuts than any other tree region worldwide, cultivated or wild. With about 90 species of oaks in North America, and with the average grown oak dropping up to 10,000 acorns in a mast year, you can see why it may seem treacherous to walk on my driveway lately. I feel like I need to wear a hard hat.
It’s amazing to me that these trees can somehow synchronize when to bear their fruit. Tree nuts like acorns are a high protein snack for a wide variety of wildlife species, from tiny beetles to birds to big black bears.
Mast years seem to have an evolutionary advantage for the oaks. Producing nuts is hard work for the trees and stunts the tree’s growth, so it couldn’t survive if every year was a mast year By coordinating the timing of their seed production, it’s more likely these seed-eating species will be satiated before they can eat all the surplus seeds produced during a mast year – and this means, ideally, the rest of the seeds are left to sprout and grow into trees. This is referred to as “predator satiation.” And, since oaks (especially the native white oak in our area) support a wide range of pollinators, that’s the good news.
However, more acorns also mean more mice and deer, which means more deer ticks and cases of Lyme disease in our area; that’s the bad news.
Mast years are not a predictor of a severe winter. I guess trees are no better than our local weather reporter for future weather. With our milder winters we are seeing ticks much later into fall and much earlier in the spring. Please be careful in areas with tall grass or shrubs and do a thorough tick check on you and your pets when coming inside.
Pat Dray is a past president of the Garden Club of Orange and a master gardener.