UNDATED (WJON News) — Oak trees are dropping an abundance of acorns this year and many people believe it is a way that the trees are protecting their species during the drought.

But, a forestry specialist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says that’s likely not the case. Mike Reinikainen is the Silviculture Program Coordinator for the DNR.  He says oak masting is a cycle of nature where oak trees produce bumper crops of acorns every few years.

They’re kind of in this dance with seed predators and the thought is that they are able to overcome their seed predators by putting out a lot of seed at once. At the same time, they take breaks for years when they’re not producing a lot of seed. That population of seed predators drops and then they throw a lot of seeds out again all at once to overwhelm what’s there for seed predators and grow oak trees again.

He says it would be different if the acorns were green and were smaller than normal. Then, the tree likely stopped producing seeds as a result of the drought stress and dropped them early. Reinikainen says that’s not the case this year with mature acorns falling at the normal time of the season.

Furthermore, he says there is no evidence to suggest acorns damage your lawn by changing the pH balance of the soil, but most people rake them up as a matter of comfort for bare feet or because they’re unsightly.


READ RELATED ARTICLES


LOOK: Food history from the year you were born

From product innovations to major recalls, Stacker researched what happened in food history every year since 1921, according to news and government sources.

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list’s average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

Gallery — Every Movie Theater Candy, Ranked: