Natural phenomenon is the reason the oak trees are going nuts
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BY ADRIAN HIGGINS/The Washington Post
If an acorn falls in a forest, does it make a sound? Who cares? When it falls in the urban forest, however, it can drive you nuts.
Ask Karen Stewart, who has spent the fall crushing acorns with her car, slipping on them on her patio and generally feeling under siege from the seven old white oaks that tower above her Arlington, Va., rambler. As if exacting some terrible revenge against humankind, the seven giants are raining nuts night and day on her roof, her skylights, her gutters, even on her dog, Cleo. Untold thousands have fallen in the past month.
“The first week it started, the dog barked every time an acorn hit the house. Until she got used to it,” said Stewart, whose husband, Doug, and two teenagers, James and Victoria, have yet to get used to it. Outside, they get beaned by the acorns; inside, the nuts can be heard popping as they hit the roof.
“Last night, they woke me up six times,” said Stewart, who has learned to discern the percussive nuances of the seeds. There’s the metallic sound of a nut ricocheting off the gutters, the drumming on her low bedroom roof and the crack when one nut falls onto another and sends both shooting off, like pool balls. The family gathers them on weekends, including those loading up the gutters.
The Stewarts are not enduring this alone. This is one of those years when certain species of oak are producing a bumper crop across large geographic areas.
“Every once in awhile you will have a heavy year,” said Will Frerichs owner of Frerichs Tree Service in Lincoln. “It does seem like they are heavy this year.”
Oh yeah, agrees Bob Henrickson, assistant director of horticulture programs with the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum.
“The pin oaks on my property are just loaded this year,” he said. “There are too many (acorns) for even the squirrels in my neighborhood. And good acorns are just going to waste.”
Horticulturists call it masting and are seeing it in the mid-Atlantic in a group of closely related oaks, especially white oaks, chestnut oaks, swamp white oaks and post oaks.
“In the chestnut oaks, we are having a huge crop,” said Joan Feely, curator of native plants at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.
In Lincoln, the red oaks dropped a slew of their large acorns about three weeks ago.
Now the pin oaks, with their much smaller acorns (about ½ inch across) are dropping in profusion, Henrickson said.
Scientists generally believe that masting is a key survival strategy for oaks and that it may take several years for an oak to build up enough nutrient reserves to seed heavily. The irregular cycles thwart pests and predators by producing an occasional crop too large for them to consume.
Feely said that when her gardeners were trying to collect acorns to grow in a nonmasting year, not one fallen nut was viable. Hundreds lay on the ground, and they had either been partially eaten by animals or infested with pests. (The acorn weevil is a major killer.) Feely had to bring in a cherry picker to reach acorns still in the tree canopy.
Another theory is that the oaks may be seeding heavily because of prior stress from pests or drought, and masting is used as one factor in assessing a tree’s health, said Eric Wiseman, a professor of urban forestry at Virginia Tech.
Wiseman said he has also seen masting in other types of trees this year in southwest Virginia, including hickory, walnut and beech.
Henrickson questions the drought theory.
“However, we’re in the sixth year of a drought,” he said. “And we’re seeing it (masting) off and on. There have been heavy crops in drought years. But we also see heavy production every two or three years, so next year we may not have nearly as big of a crop.”
Whatever the origins of the phenomenon, it is likely to lead to a fat and happy winter for all manner of foragers, including squirrels, chipmunks, deer, bears, turkeys, geese and crows. The windfall is good for critters but tough for folks enjoying their gardens in the fall.
“If you’re sitting in the garden, all you hear is the thundering roar of acorns pummeling the car roofs, the fences and just about everything,” said Ann McMurray, who lives with her husband, Chris, and their two children in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Alexandria, Va.
In 20 years there, she said, “I think this is the most we have ever had.”
Acorns may be good for critters and crafters, but they are tough on lawns and backs, said Frerichs.
The leaves fall late — nearly one-quarter of an oak tree’s leaves will still hang from the branches through the winter, Frerichs said. When the leaves do fall they are heavy, get frozen over with snow and ice, creating a nasty acid that destroys the grass.
And as for acorns, short of picking them up by hand or hoping for a hungry community of squirrels to hit your neighborhood, there are no easy quick options for getting them up.
“You can’t rake them up,” Frerichs said. “It takes a powerful vacuum to pick up acorns.”
Or you can take the Henrickson approach: “Invite a few squirrels over. Or just wait a few days and they will show up and clean the acorns up for you.”
In the Blue Ridge, staff and volunteers with the Virginia Department of Forestry have already picked up about six tons of acorns. “We can get several hundred pounds in a day with three or four people,” said Dwight Stallard, the department’s nursery manager. Their secret — are you listening, Karen Stewart? — is the Bag-A-Nut harvester. This is like a push mower, except it has a drum full of rubber stalks. The acorns lodge between the prongs and are fed into a nut catcher. The Bag-A-Nut company, based in Jacksonville, Fla., sells four models for acorn gathering, including two that can be pulled behind a garden tractor. Prices range from $355 to $635.
The nuts are gathered so Stallard and his colleagues can make new oak trees at the department’s nursery in Augusta County. Sown soon after collecting, they grow to healthy seedlings to sell to rural property owners who want to forest their land. Saplings from acorns harvested this fall will be sold in early 2008, Stallard said. Current prices are $250 for 1,000 seedlings. Shipping and backache pills are extra. (Stewart has been employing her own acorn-collecting devices: her husband and son.)
The backyard gardener with a need for trees can sow his or her own acorns, of course. Acorns from the white oak group germinate quickly and should be planted promptly. Peg one-inch netting over the acorns for their first few weeks to thwart squirrels and crows. The holes should be large enough for the young stems to grow unimpeded. The nuts can be started in four-inch pots (outdoors and similarly protected against foragers) but planted in their permanent locations by spring, before the root systems get too large.
Plant a white oak where its roots will not be disturbed and where its limbs will have space to stretch.
But if you’re obsessed with your lawn, avoid planting an oak tree, said Henrickson.
“We say that oak trees are not for yardners, they are for gardeners.”
Journal Star reporter Erin Andersen contributed to this story. You can reach her at eandersen@journalstar.com or 473-7217.
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