It's hailing acorns!

September 15, 2009 9:15 AM

While we were enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon in the sun all we could hear was the noise of acorns falling from our trees, and now our back yard is covered in green acorns. It seems very early in the year for them to be dropping before they ripen to the brown variety and Mrs. 543DP and myself are wondering if this is an indicator of anything we should expect this winter.

Any Old Farmers Almanac experts out there that might have an idea about this? We're in Virginia, closer to Richmond than DC and this summer hasn't been anything unusual in terns of rainfall or lack of it.

And will the squirrels eat the green acorns? We usually collect all the acorns up and dump them in one big pile for the squirrels and other small critters to use as a buffet, but we’re not sure if we should do the same for these unripe acorns.

posted by 543DoublePlay to Science & Nature (9 answers total)

Not sure what it could mean, but last fall in the northeast (I'm on Long Island), our oak trees produced almost NO acorns. Don't know if it's an indicator of the future, or a reflection of the past.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 9:27 AM on September 15, 2009

ObscureReferenceMan: That was a recognized thing that happened last year: Scientists baffled by acorn shortage (also on NPR).

The squirrels *destroyed* my pumpkins last year at halloween because of this.

Maybe so many green acorns are falling because the trees are producing too many to make up for last year? Maybe you just had a wind storm?
posted by malphigian at 9:36 AM on September 15, 2009 [1 favorite]

I've heard that with maple keys the trees tend to produce a ton or very few in order to throw off the populations of critters that eat them. The trees essentially starve the mice/squirrels out for a few years and then drop so many keys that the mice can't possibly eat all of them. It may be the same way w. acorns.
posted by GuyZero at 9:38 AM on September 15, 2009

If you google "acorns falling early" there's lots of information, from scientific to old wives' tales. They're falling early here in Kansas too this year.
posted by amyms at 9:44 AM on September 15, 2009

The hickory nuts are falling off our tree, and the also-falling leaves are still green.
posted by RichardS at 9:47 AM on September 15, 2009

In the UK, where autumn arrives slightly early than North America, the acorns are already littering my garden and have been falling for 3 or 4 weeks now.
posted by essexjan at 9:55 AM on September 15, 2009

We have a bunch of acorns on the ground in Ohio as well, and they've been falling for a at least a couple of weeks.
posted by Piscean at 11:14 AM on September 15, 2009

Sometimes oaks will prematurely drop acorns (abscission) when they are infested with pests. This allows the acorns to be eaten and the pest destroyed. You might open a few and see if there's anything inside- in which case, you should throw them away.
posted by oneirodynia at 2:14 PM on September 15, 2009

to wit: Mast Crop
posted by klanawa at 2:15 PM on September 15, 2009