Mast Years – Discover more!

Have you noticed the huge amount of acorns this year?

Enjoying the autumn leaves blowing in the breeze has become a bit of a hazard this Autumn! A large gust of wind can send acorns, conkers and seeds hurtling down to earth, causing us to duck and take cover. They don’t half hurt when they bonk you on the head! Not only are pathways and footpaths covered, there’s a huge amount of berries; Hawthorn, Rowan, and even the Blackberries this year were fully stocked!

Did you know that this abundance happens once every 5-6 years? Autumns like we’ve had this year are called a Mast Year. A Mast Year is when trees, bushes and our foliage all coincide with a huge energy push to produce and release as many seeds as physically possible. In a normal year, one tree could produce an average amount of 2,000 acorns per tree. This number is still a large amount but in a Mast year, this could be 10,000 acorns!! 

What does Mast mean?
It’s an old English word for large amounts of nuts on the ground. In medieval times, masts (nuts and seeds) were used to fatten up pigs and livestock.

Why do trees do this?
There’s a huge benefit to this massive release of seeds. Seeds are a great source of energy to creatures like birds, mammals and insects. In an average year, seeds are eaten and the amount of nuts that survive and go on to produce a tree is small. But in a Mast year, there’s simply too many seeds for these creatures to feed on. They’re simply stuffed with food, so they leave a fair number of seeds, which go onto produce more trees. It’s a guaranteed way to make sure that at least some seeds survive.

We often see a rise in the population of these animals that eat nuts and seeds, like mice. Because there’s so much food, often animals have more successful breeding and rear more young. Jays are a prime example of a bird that feeds mostly off acorns found during autumn.

What’s the negative to a Mast Year?
Because of the enormous amount of energy needed to create these seeds, this can stunt the parent tree’s growth. The energy that’s normally put into the tree’s growth was put into creating new seeds this year instead.

How did they all know to choose this year? How do they coincide? There’s a few theories; some say it’s the mushroom channels, the mycelium network, that connects the trees and passes messages along. Others say it’s on a set pattern of 5 years, some people think it’s linked to weather patterns earlier in the year. In reality, we don’t know! It’s a big mystery!

What can we do?
Pick some nuts like acorns, conkers and beech nuts and produce your own tree! Plant it in a little pot, keep it watered and in a sunny spot and who knows! You might have your own tree in a few years!