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."
Sounds to me like it's pretty significant portion of the US.
Billerica, north of Boston: I can report missing acorns.
A month ago my father-in-law and his relatives were exchanging missing-acorn stories, because the big oaks in his yard (I don't know what species) didn't produce any this year, and he's curious. He seems to think it was fairly unusual, and he's lived with those trees for decades and decades.
I guess it's not just him.
It would appear that something is up. Let's all hope that it's something transient.
Chelmsford, near Billerica: I have a ton of oak trees on my land, lots of fallen leaves, and no acorns. I didn't think about it until I saw this post though.
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.
And quotes from posts on internet discussion groups are hardly a reliable census method.
According to my Dad, the acorn crop has been so good in central Texas this year that corn feeders have been (relatively) ineffective at luring in deer.
I'd guess that the trees in a region have synchronized their reproductive cycles as an adaptation, like cicadas: hide from predators (thinning their ranks) for a period, then overwhelm predators the next period.
2) Environmentalists respond by planting hundreds of thousands of trees.
3) Trees laugh to selves very, very quietly.
(It is a joke, since the time scales are wrong, but the core is serious: if humans are the dominant selection pressure on the environment, then "natural" selection means "achieving maximum fitness for what the humans like".)
This would be my guess too, except that people are saying they haven't seen this extreme of an absence of acorns before. If this is an adaptation against acorn eaters, why is it so rare?
Also, squirrels don't just eat acorns. They also bury them and forget to dig them up, thus helping to produce more trees.
I seriously and honestly believe it is because of Stink Bugs... Since they came from China, they have taken over and this is definitely their doing. But hey, what do I know.
It's always a good year for something. It's always a bad year for something. You hear about how it's a bad year for corn, or a good year for mosquitos, but you never hear about how it was a great year for strawberries. (Or how it was a bad year for mosquitos unless the report can work in an angle about mosquitos being the foundation of the ecosystem.)
The mere fact that acorns didn't drop is not, in itself, intrinsically interesting. It's always a bad year for something, that's what ecosystem diversity is about. The closer you look at the world around you, the more you notice the major variations in the output of plant life. The mere fact of variation is uninteresting.
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[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 61.3 ms ] threadUpdate: The title has been changed, it originally said that this year there were no acorns anywhere.
Sounds to me like it's pretty significant portion of the US.
Also from the article:
> But many skeptics say oaks in other regions are producing plenty of acorns
A month ago my father-in-law and his relatives were exchanging missing-acorn stories, because the big oaks in his yard (I don't know what species) didn't produce any this year, and he's curious. He seems to think it was fairly unusual, and he's lived with those trees for decades and decades.
I guess it's not just him.
It would appear that something is up. Let's all hope that it's something transient.
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.
And quotes from posts on internet discussion groups are hardly a reliable census method.
(Shakes cane.)
Flying back home tomorrow, I wonder if there's anything on the ground in Texas...
1) Produce no new acorns.
2) Environmentalists respond by planting hundreds of thousands of trees.
3) Trees laugh to selves very, very quietly.
(It is a joke, since the time scales are wrong, but the core is serious: if humans are the dominant selection pressure on the environment, then "natural" selection means "achieving maximum fitness for what the humans like".)
Also, squirrels don't just eat acorns. They also bury them and forget to dig them up, thus helping to produce more trees.
[1] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22where+have+all+t...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder
"...If you're a squirrel, it's a big worry..."
Hacker News. News for hackers.
And worried squirrels.
The mere fact that acorns didn't drop is not, in itself, intrinsically interesting. It's always a bad year for something, that's what ecosystem diversity is about. The closer you look at the world around you, the more you notice the major variations in the output of plant life. The mere fact of variation is uninteresting.