There are gluts of acorns on the ground right now. This year looks like a mast year for oaks--a bumper crop of acorns. Mast is used to describe the fruit of woody plants associated with forests . A mast year refers to the simultaneous, abundant fruit production within a population of trees. How big is a bumper crop compared to non-mast years? Mike Hallworth, Vermont Atlas of Life, quantifies the difference between mast and non-mast years : "During mast years, there may be anywhere between a 3- to 9-fold increase in the amount of nuts and cones." Many of the acorns I observe are the fruits of trees in the red oak group, for example Northern Red Oak ( Quercus rubra ) and Pin Oak ( Q . palustris ). I have seen very few white oak acorns. Oaks in this group include Swamp White Oak ( Q . bicolor ) and White Oak ( Q . alba ). One of the differences between these two groups of oaks is the maturation of their fruit. White oak acorns ripen in the same year the female flowers are ferti
Photo by Mohammad Metri via Unsplash.com Did you read my January post about newsletters for nature lovers ? This post is about some of the podcasts I listen to that focus on plants and the outdoors. I host a podcast, Your Bird Story , about bird stories and birdwatching in cities. You can listen to it wherever you subscribe to podcasts. Without further ado, here is my list of nature-centric podcasts. 1. In Defense of Plants When In Defense of Plants host, Matt Candeias says, "without further ado," this is my clue to devote my 100% listening attention. This is not hard to do. I am consistently amazed by the plant content Matt and his guests share in their conversation. If you are going to add one a plant podcast to your rotation, make it this one. Oh, there's also an In Defense of Plants blog! 2. This Old Tree Historic trees are full of stories, and Doug Still and his guests uncover them in long-form, monthly episodes. He has an extensive tree people network so you hear