Lately, things have been really noisy at our house. We have lots of oak trees that extend their canopy over our metal roof, and this year they are ridiculously full of acorns. When the wind blows (and even sometimes when it doesn’t), the acorns drop onto the roof with a rat-a-tat-tat that sounds like we’re in the middle of a hailstorm.
There are so many acorns falling that I’m sweeping them off the porch in piles. The deer, birds and squirrels are enjoying a feeding frenzy, as this manna from heaven keeps pouring down. Yesterday a doe and two older fawns were chowing down right outside our kitchen window in broad daylight. The abundance of deer yummies on the ground makes them even bolder than usual.
Such an unusually large crop of acorns piqued my curiosity. We’re coming off the worst drought in decades, which, I would have thought, would cause just the opposite effect. What the heck is going on?
Turns out, we’re experiencing what is known as a “mast” year. A mast year happens when the number of nuts that trees produce in a given year is exponentially higher than the usual. Apparently, masting occurs every four to seven years, but scientists are not sure exactly what triggers it. One reasonable-sounding theory is that the trees do it to ensure the survival of their species. In most years, not too many acorns are produced. All sorts of critters quickly eat those few before they ever reach the ground, so they never have a chance to germinate. In self-defense, the tree basically decides to overwhelm all the seedeaters so that some of the acorns can convert to seedlings. There’s an interesting article about all this in American Scientist by Walt Koenig and Jean Knops.
We have two kinds of oak trees at our place: Black Jack oaks and Post oaks. They look a lot alike, but as I walked around looking at them I noticed that the Post oaks were covered with acorns, while the Black Jacks had hardly any. Another mystery to research!
I learned that all oak trees fall into one of two groups: red oaks or white oaks. Black Jack oaks are in the red oak group and Post oaks are in the white oak group. White oak acorns typically mature in a single growing season and taste sweet. Red oak acorns take two growing seasons to mature and taste bitter. Last year’s late freeze evidently killed most of the red oak acorn crop that would have matured this fall, so the Black Jacks didn’t produce much. Since the Post oaks are in the white oak group and produce annually, they are able to inundate us with acorns this year. From the animals’ perspective, that’s a lucky thing, since the white oak acorns are, according to the experts, tastier.
The taste test was verified yesterday, as Alex was walking toward his office, which happens to be located in the garage next to our chicken enclosure. He heard a commotion and went to check it out. Acorns were bouncing off the roof and into the yard, and the girls were going after them like they were grasshoppers.
After years of drought, it is an amazing and wonderful thing to see the way nature rebounds, given a decent rain. Such resilience serves to remind us that regardless of how discouraging things can be, there’s always reason to be hopeful. Out of all those acorns falling to the ground, one of them is sure to take root.
