No acorns this year? [View All]

[n2doc]

Acorn Watchers Wonder What Happened to Crop

A flying squirrel retrieves food put out by the staff at Long Branch Nature Center in Arlington County. (By Richard A. Lipski -- The Washington Post)



By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 30, 2008; Page A01
The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

"I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," he said. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/29/AR2008112902045.html