Trees - What's Up With The Strange Behavior?

[BIGEarl]

What’s going on this year???

The maple trees on my property had no seed pods at all. I believe the squirrels think I had something to do with it and are now organizing against me. They’re really upset.

That’s not the end of it either.

I have a number of mature oaks on my property that have all dropped their acorns. The driveway is a mess with undeveloped acorns that are about the size of a Peanut M&M.

This will make fall clean-up a lot easier but I’ve never seen this before.

Somebody around here must know something.

 

[ColdRiverRun]

There was a pretty serious frost kill zone at a range of elevation here in NY did you get one over there too?

 

[Jason Berard]

That's what I was wondering....I was on a property a couple weeks ago, at about 1700 feet, and the leaves were all frost killed.

 

[Raymond]

There have been several small branches, chock full of acorns, fall out of an oak tree at the corner of our property in the last week. Two came down while I was right there with the lawn mower, but it’s a non-powered Fiskars mower, so it’s not as if there would have been any unusual vibrations or anything.

This is only about 230 feet above sea level.

 

[BIGEarl]

There was a pretty serious frost kill zone at a range of elevation here in NY did you get one over there too?

I don't think this is the problem with the trees in my area. I am located at a low elevation close to the Massachusetts border and there is always a lot of hot air coming from that general direction. But I digress....

The foliage on the maples and oaks looks great. I checked around the area and can find no trees that appear to be in distress.

I guess aside from an easier clean-up in the fall I'll have less damage from my truck being bombarded by fully developed acorns.

 

[peakbagger]

The white pines in the area are looking pretty shabby, a couple of plant diseases that went wild during the wet weather last year killed the needles. They are supposed to grow back but the trees look brown in many spots.

 

[weatherman]

Same pattern in Shrewsbury MA as Earl noted... our red maples had very few seedpods, and our red oaks are shedding tiny acorns like crazy. All trees look very healthy. No late freezes... in fact we had the earliest last freeze this year that I can remember. We had strawberries ready for picking by 5/23! Only thing is we've had perhaps somewhat more wind than usual this Spring, with a couple severe thunderstorms with hail. Those storms did not by themselves bring many acorns down.

We did have an enormous acorn crop last Fall, if that has anything to do with it.

I suspect this is random variation, but we need a tree expert to confirm. Anyone? Bueller (I mean Spencer?)

 

[DougPaul]

Some trees (I believe including oaks, don't know about maples) alternate periods of low seed production with a year or so of high production.

This is an anti-predator strategy--the low seed years reduce the population of predators in preparation of the high seed year so there aren't enough predators to eat the entire crop of seeds.

Perhaps this is what you are observing.

Doug

 

[brianW]

Don't trees produce less seeds when they are not stressed and more when they are stressed?

 

[Barkingcat]

The white pines in the area are looking pretty shabby, a couple of plant diseases that went wild during the wet weather last year killed the needles. They are supposed to grow back but the trees look brown in many spots.

I've noticed this, as well, in the area...I wondered what was going on.

 

[Jazzbo]

Red Maple Seed Failure

We've been living in this house and its small yard for 19 years now. We have pretty tall mature red maple in back the yard. Every year it produces huge crop of little winged seeds and being a overly diligent about spring cleaning, every year I sweep up the little seeds. So it seemed strange this year for first time there was no crop of seeds. We also have a junior maple growing in back probbly destined to replace the red maple when ants finally eat out inside of the big maple. I noticed both little maple and big maple leaves were severely decimated by little tiny inch worms or caterpillers. I can't tell what's going on up high in the red maple, but young maple is at shoulder level and that's where I saw the tiny worms. I'm speculating this is what is going on in the big maple.

Hey I just found this link via Google on NH forestry mentions an inch worm related to the so-called winter-moth. Remember we had unusual warm spell in Nov-Dec? I remember now we saw biggest hatch I ever saw of those strange winter moths last Nov-Dec. Maybe they're the culprits here. Check this out! The tiny inch worms in the pictures look kinda like the little worms I saw.

http://www.nhdfl.org/library/pdf/Forest Health/2007newsletterfinal_lg.pdf

 

[Jazzbo]

Another article about Winter Moths

Here is another article on-line concerning Winter Moth problem.

http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2010/04/13/news/7242108.txt

 

[una_dogger]

Don't trees produce less seeds when they are not stressed and more when they are stressed?

Oaks "mast" in times of stress -- eg they throw lots of acorns.

Interesting thread because we just noticed yesterday some pretty serious defoliation on the leaves of the lower branches of our Sugar Maples and were talking about doing some 'net research on what types of stresses trees were facing this year.