Acorns Keep Falling on My Head
I didn’t get much sleep last night. Again. For weeks, I have been woken up by the steady plounk plunk plunk of acorns falling on my roof. It seems as if this year, the acorns are falling earlier than normal, and there certainly seem to be more of them.
What’s going on?
This seems to be a “mast year” for acorns. Every four to seven years, oak trees produce more acorns than normal.
But why?
Acorns are the nut of white and red oak trees. There is a seed inside the hard shell of an acorn. They may be a nuisance to us but they are an important part of the ecosystem – they are eaten by the birds, squirrels and deer that we see in the Fall. (Acorns have lots of the protein, carbs and fat that the animals need now and throughout the winter.) And seeds develop into future generations of oak trees.
As you might expect, trees (like all living things) respond to their environment. And the acorn plopping is simply a response to our local trees’ environment. The wet Spring meant that trees “drank” a lot of water. Then we had our brutally hot summer. We didn’t, but the trees loved the heat and humidity – they produced bigger, fatter, and more acorns. But lately it’s been exceptionally dry. So in the absence of getting water from the rain, trees do what they need to do to make sure they have enough water to thrive and survive. As noted in this interesting paper by the University of Tennessee Extension, they “often abort acorns during periods of stress, thereby conserving resources such as water and nutrients.”
This article gives some explanations about mast years. Here’s a pretty complex but enlightening explanation of masting.
I think I will sleep easier tonight knowing that I may have my little annoyance on the roof is good for the furry creatures scampering through my neighborhood.
