David E. Ross wrote:
On 11/13/2009 12:47 PM, John McGaw wrote:
Freckles wrote:
Just finished raking and bagging almost 20 bushels of acorns from one of my
oak trees. The tree measures about 35'x 35'.

For the last six years that I have lived here the tree has produces no more
than maybe 4 or 5 bushels of acorns in one season.

I have another oak tree in my back yard that is about the same size and it
looks like there are about the same amount of acorns on the ground there as
I raked up from the tree in my front yard.

Has anyone else noticed such an over abundance of acorns on their oak trees
this year?

Freckles


Well, last year I had a super-abundance of them from several trees. This
year there don't seem to be nearly so many. Odd thing is that last year was
in a drought and this year there was excessive rainfall -- I'd have
expected the situation would be the opposite.

One thing for sure is I need to get them up pretty quickly. Last Autumn I
ignored them and I had literally hundreds of little oak trees popping up in
my two large hosta beds this Spring and getting them out was no fun at all.


During a drought, some trees and shrubs react to the stress by putting
more effort into reproducing their species. Not only do they produce
more fruit (acorns for oaks), but also their pollen has a stronger
effect on persons with allergies (possibly by being more abundant).


That would seem to correlate pretty well. During the drought Spring I had
extremely bad tree allergy problems but during this last wet Spring my tree
allergies were just about non-existent.

--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com