Where Have All the Acorns Gone?

[mamadrama]

This is pretty curious.

_http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/29/AR2008112902045.html

Acorn Watchers Wondering What Happened to the Crop
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."

The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather, Simmons thought. But he hoped it wasn't a climatic event. "Let's hope it's not something ghastly going on with the natural world."

To find out, Simmons and Arlington naturalists began calling around. A naturalist in Maryland found no acorns on an Audubon nature walk there. Ditto for Fairfax, Falls Church, Charles County, even as far away as Pennsylvania. There are no acorns falling from the majestic oaks in Arlington National Cemetery.

"Once I started paying attention, I couldn't find any acorns anywhere. Not from white oaks, red oaks or black oaks, and this was supposed to be their big year," said Greg Zell, a naturalist at Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington. "We're talking zero. Not a single acorn. It's really bizarre."


Zell began to do some research. He found Internet discussion groups, including one on Topix called "No acorns this year," reporting the same thing from as far away as the Midwest up through New England and Nova Scotia. "We live in Glenwood Landing, N.Y., and don't have any acorns this year. Really weird," wrote one. "None in Kansas either! Curiouser and curiouser."

Jennifer Klepper of Annapolis even blogged about it. "Last year our trees shot down so many acorns that you were taking your life into your own hands if you went outside without a crash helmet on," she wrote this month. "But this year? Forget it."

Louise Garris lives in an Arlington neighborhood called Oakcrest, which is home to towering oak trees. When she couldn't find any acorns, she began putting out peanuts for the squirrels. Last year, oaks in metropolitan Washington produced a bumper crop of acorns, and squirrels and other urban wildlife produced an abundance of young. This year, experts said, many animals will starve.

Garris started calling nurseries. "I was worried they'd think I was crazy. But they said I wasn't the only one calling who was concerned about it," she said. "This is the first time I can remember in my lifetime not seeing any acorns drop in the fall and I'm 53. You have to wonder, is it global warming? Is it environmental? It makes you wonder what's going on."

Simmons has a theory about the wet and dry cycles. But many skeptics say oaks in other regions are producing plenty of acorns, and the acorn bust here is nothing more than the extreme of a natural boom-and-bust cycle. But the bottom line is that no one really knows. "It's sort of a mystery," Zell said.

 

[Laura]

This is really bizarre... I think we had a lot of acorns this year but I'll go out in the morning and check to be sure.

 

[Johnno]

I'm just wondering from our European members if there are acorns around?

Can't check here because it's summer and there aren't many Oak trees around.

 

[Nienna]

SOTT posted an article similar to this, even quoting a couple parts of this article and a link to it.

When I read it, I went outside and looked and we have acorns all over the place so it has to be a regional thing, I am thinking.

STILL, it is very bizarre none-the-less.

EDIT: Thought I should add that I'm in California. It might just be that since these are a different variety from those on the east coast, maybe this is why there are acorns on the ground.

 

[go2]

I have seen a bumper crop of acorns in the Pacific Northwest and the Middle west this year. Some oaks bear fruit every three or four years depending on the weather during the flowering period, usually in April in the area of my observation. It is possible a late frost may have damaged the oak flowers in Virginia and Maryland this spring.

 

[mamadrama]

Sorry, I missed that earlier SOTT article. From what I've been able to find out so far, it seems there is a bumper crop in Western NC this year, fwiw.

 

[Laura]

Want to confirm that we seem to have had a bumper crop of them here in France also. So maybe oak trees and the CIA in VA don't get on well together?

 

[GRiM]

A quick check on the google indicates that Oaks are wind-pollinated so I think that rules out the bee death. If there is no wind then it might be no pollination.

 

[mamadrama]

Here's an update on the acorn situation. Apparently the region of missing acorns seems to be from Washington, D. C., going up along I-95 and west of the freeway through central Pennsylvania, up through New England and in parts of eastern Canada. Naturalists in Richmond, Virginia, only 50 to 100 miles away, reported plenty of acorns.

According to Rod Simmons, natural resource specialist and field botanist at Alexandria Dept. of Recreation, he found a few acorns on a tree that never formed properly that suggests the oaks were never pollinated well. That is his theory: that they had so much rain during the crucial seven to ten days for pollination in May 2008, that it greatly affected distribution of pollen. May 2008 was the third wettest month on record dating to 1871. Monthly rainfall totaled 10.66 inches, only .03 inches behind the record of 10.69 inches set in both 1889 and 1953. Oaks depend on windblown pollen.

Also, a professor in California who has been studying rare oaks there said he had found good correlations between acid rain and killing or affecting the oak pollen. According to Simmons, there are issues with pollution in this region. According to him, counties east of Washington, D. C., have arguably the second worst air quality in the nation just second to Los Angeles.

More details can be found here:
_http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1510&category=Environment