In keeping with the shagbark hickory theme, I collected many nuts recently from a tree in Chevy Chase. Many nuts are still on the tree. Compared to the tree in Delaware the CC tree's bark is not as shaggy and the nuts are bigger. I had to open them with a vice. They were delicious but alot of work. Also, some of the leaves of the CC tree had 7 leaflets. Are these differences to be expected as natural variation or is something else going on? Bark on the Chevy Chase tree.

Hi Mayalena! It seems most trees to to seed intermittently, and this is true of the maples in my yard (as well as Oak, Linden, and Yellowwood). The big silver maple in the front yard goes to seed every year, it is an amazingly prolific tree, but one year it was so bad there was a 2 inch layer of wings in the gutters. The Sugar maple has only had 1 heavy seed year that I can recall in recent years, and I read somewhere they go to seed every 2-5 years. Norways also seem to be on an intermittent schedule. There are lots of seedlings this Spring, but it's been a few years since I've seen them. BUT - I'll never have to deal with that problem again - finally had the last huge Norway maple removed in March - yippee!

So, today, I'm off for the holiday, but stuck home with no car. Poor me. I guess I have nothing else to do but work outside. (Well, there's always housework, but I close my eyes and it disappears like magic! I love the way that works!) So I bring out my rake and two leaf bags, and ignore the snickers of my neighbors, who snicker at me every year as I go out with my rake and two leaf bags to rake my acre with 40+ oak trees, as they run their machines. I much prefer to rake in peace for weeks- uh, days, than have those infernal machines whining for hours on end. Anyway, I rake from the street up to my front beds, then get down on the hands and knees to clean up the beds. Holy...friggin...moly...!!! There were THOUSANDS of acorns already rooted in this one bed. I spent almost two hours cleaning up a bed that is about fifteen feet long and 4 feet wide, and it was mostly just cutting back echinacea and monarda, and pulling up those darn rooted acorns! I was able to scoop them out by the handfuls in the trench edges, but of course most of them seemed to prefer to root right in the middle of the crown of the plants. It was like harvesting carrots, the roots on most of them were so thick and long! I didn't even get to the second bed. Too time-consuming. After all, I have an acre to rake! (which takes longer than one might think because I have to walk 200 feet to dump my two bags of leaves a million times while raking.) I just quickly removed the whole leaves from the second bed and concentrated on raking. I knew there'd be a lot of oak seedlings to pull next spring, but I think it's going to be worse than I thought. I may have to hire someone just to pull oak seedlings, lol! Funny thing - I did a search to find this thread, and at the top of the page there was an ad - "Click here to find great prices on Acorns. Buy Acorns now." Sheesh, if people bought acorns, I could go into business and become a rich woman! :) Dee

Oaks have a pattern of producing acorns that is called 'masting'. This means that some species in a large geographical area will produce a bumper crop in some years. Next year will likely be light, but some of the other species will be heavy. The advantages for this from the tree's standpoint are obvious. For instance, if you are a weevil that eats acorns, you won't have much to eat next year. This helps cut down on the population of acorn eaters. Squirrels also have this problem. Masting is something that is known, but nobody knows how so many trees, located so many miles apart all get the signal to make acorns. It isn't an every other year thing, and no regular pattern can be made out. Scientific American had an article on masting in Calif. oaks in Aug or Sept, and although they had rainfall data, weather temps. etc., the only thing that could be said was that it seemed to corelate loosely with early spring weather. Black Walnuts are notorious for being alternate year bearing trees. (Some apples are like that too.) Last year was an off year for my big tree, but this year is one of those 9 wheelbarrow loads type of year. I've found that the easiest way to clean them is to rake them together with an upside garden rake, then use a corn shovel to load them.