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Acorns Disappear Across the Country
Hugh Pickens writes "Botanist Rod Simmons thought he was going crazy when couldn't find any acorns near his home in Arlington County, Virginia. 'I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe,' said Simmons. 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. Simmons and Naturalist Greg Zell began to do some research and 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.' The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather and 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 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."
...to what the majority of comments to this article will be related, given the delicious quotes like this in the article:'
Of course, these will be ignored on page two of the story:
I know it's not a popular sentiment here, but Beware the church of climate alarm.
Here in the Hanover county north of Richmond Va, we had an early and massive acorn crop. It would be interesting to correlate some weather phenomenon to acorns (long drought in late summer = early crop, very wet spring = huge crop, etc).
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I remember one year growing up the Oaks in my backyard didn't produce any acorns, instead they produced these strange green globes that were soft almost like a grape except more spherical and speckled. When I split one open there was something akin to what cotton wood trees put out or dandylions, a soft fluffy thing. I wonder if the Oaks have a secondary seed production mechanism? Is that what I saw? that was probably 20 years or more ago so the memory is a little hazy. I wonder if the oaks are producing those things? or nothing at all.
This really puts a causality twist on that old chestnut.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I have noticed this cycle in the Boston area over the last 20 years. The squirrel population will follow the acorn yield. Some years there are very few squirrels about, and the chipmunk population seems to boom. Then the squirrels will have a great year and have too many little ones. Some of the babies will end up on the ground, pushed out by the others.
Don't let your kids adopt them or talk you into taking them to a wildlife shelter. Believe me. All you have to do is put them back into a tree in a basket. The mommy squirrel will come find them and take them home by the scruff like a kitten.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I had what felt like a metric ton in my yard this year.
All over my state we have the typical ton of acorns.. Some are freaking huge compared to previous years.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Big Acorn needs a bailout.
this guy's got em all
http://www.old-computers.com/club/collectors/ordis.asp?c=3664
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Panic when the dolphins decide its time to leave.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Every so many years the Oak Trees cut off production of acorns. It has been documented and studied somewhat. I remember reading a scientific article about it in my bio class. The thinking is that there is a codependent relationship between Oak trees and squirrels. The oak trees depend on squirrels for new oak trees (squirrels disperse and plant seeds and forget where some of them are) and the squirrels depend largely on the acorns for food. the Acorn production increases year to year, creating a population increase for the squirrels. (stable food = more babies, more babies that survive) This goes on until there is a population boom of squirrels. At about this time the oak trees halt acorn production, producing a mass die off of squirrels. From the human point of view this seems highly ungrateful of the oak tree. After all the squirrels are busy helping the trees reproduce and now the trees repay the squirrels by making them starve. But the thinking is that if the oak trees didn't do this the squirrel population would reach an equilibrium with the oak tree population's acorn production. Each and every (or nearly every) acorn would get eaten, and next to none of the acorns would result in new oak trees. This local population of oak trees would die out. So it is only the oak trees that are "underhanded" that survive and make new trees. It shouldn't be hard to find more information on this; probably under ecology literature.
I chose trees as my area of natural science geekdom, because I couldn't stand those snotty birders who take a glance at a streak through the trees that an ordinary mortal couldn't narrow down to "bird" then say something like, "Ah, a Stimpson's downy breasted tit." Trees stand still long enough to put an identification to an objective test.
Oak species often display yearly variations in acorn production. This may be helpful in that you want surplus acorns from the point of view of squirrels; producing lots of acorns every year means you get lots of squirrels. Producing a bumper crop every three or four years and a small crop otherwise maximizes the number of surplus acorns you make.
I've heard some say that White Oaks (with smoothly rounded leaf lobes) have three to four year cycles and Red Oaks (with pointy veins that stick out past the end of the leaf lobes) are acyclic. I've also heard the opposite, that White Oaks produce acorns every year and Red Oaks have longer cycles of five or even six years. My own experience is that the White Oaks I know produce bumper crops ever several years, and the Red Oaks seem to produce reliably every year. However, individual trees often vary considerably from the normal habit of their species. In my experience the yearly variations in the Red Oaks I know are small, and the acorns produced are always extremely bitter, however some Red Oaks seem to produce acorns like White Oaks: sweet, and in bumper crops.
That said, the Red Oaks in my yard have for the last fourteen years produced healthy crops of extremely bitter acorns every year. I've lived in this house fifteen years and every year, like clockwork, there has been a night in early November where I've woken up to a continual refrain of "pok-pok-pok-tumble", as the oaks shed the bulk of their acorns in one day.
It didn't happen this year. This article made me go out an look, and the tree is completely bare and there is very little acorn debris around the tree or the gutters.
Weird.
Still, the Northern Red Oak species is reported by some as having long annual crop cycles, and nobody really knows what might trigger a good or bad year. It stands to reason that trees in an area ought to have some kind of climatic trigger for coordinating their production variations. Otherwise, the winner would be a tree that produces lots of acorns every year.
This could be a situation where a meme gains steam because somebody reports a mysterious lack of acorns, and then others (like me) run out and look at their tree and say, "good lord, there aren't any acorns." Chance are if we'd been paying attention, we'd have noticed that there is occasionally a year in which the trees don't produce many acorns.
It's still a weird feeling, though, to read this story and realize that my trees produced hardly any acorns this year.
If this is real, it may be trees responding to a common climatic cue, a cue which is not necessarily a sign of a widespread disaster (unless you are a squirrel). I'd hypothesize that they ought to have some kind of cue that helps keep the squirrel population in check.
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Squirrels are just rats with good PR.
Squirrel!
The bees took them!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.