Reply #17: the acorn is not the real issue here in my humble view and it's nothing to do w. bees either [View All]

[pitohui]

let's say the deciduous tree in your neighborhood puts out plenty of acorns, as the oak tree overlooking my house used to do, it put out thousands

it matters not, because there is no habitat for any of them to grow, so they all got eaten (by the squirrels etc) ea. year and the rest of them had to be swept away

if one did find an oak tree sprouting somewhere, one has to remove it, these trees get big, and if you wait too long, it can cost a great deal of money to remove, but you can't have the roots growing into the foundation of your house, you don't want the tree itself falling on your house on (especially not with you in it, been there done there)

eventually the tree was toppled in a storm, leaving behind no legacy except for my fear of falling trees in my house -- despite making TONS of acorns all of the oaks are now gone from my street because the old ones were destroyed by the storms while the young ones had nowhere to grow up

you see the problem here? there is no place for new trees to grow until the old ones have already been removed by age, storm, etc.

THAT'S the problem, the tree can make all the acorns it likes, but there is no more habitat to grow baby trees, they get weeded out anyway, so the ultimate end point is extinction for many of these oak species whether or not they make any acorns

the acorns ain't the problem, habitat loss is the problem

here i will offer a speculation about what COULD be happening in some areas: trees communicate by chemical signal, for instance, in the cloud forest, i was shown trees that sent a chemical signal "army ants chewing our leaves," and they all started producing nasty tasting stuff in their leaves -- so the army ants had to walk further to find a tree that wasn't "in the know" (note-- the cloud forest trees were able to communicate across many species, which becomes interesting, because many species of oaks seem to be participating in this refusal to produce the acorns -- we can't assume the oaks don't "talk" across species)

here's my theory -- what is to say that oak trees in our temperate regions don't share a chemical language? maybe some of the oak trees in over built areas like d.c. and parts of florida, are saying, fuck this, we've had enough, why put good energy into producing acorns just to feed some frickin' squirrels when we never get any babies out of this for ourselves?

oak trees do not produce acorns because they give a rat's ass about squirrels, the acorns are their young, and if there is no place to raise their young...

totally whack? oh probably, but it's what i'm thinking...