My short article, " Notice the birds and trees in your local park with new guide ," is live on The Village Sun website.
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