
There are no acorns this year in some parts of the US - ingenium
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/29/AR2008112902045.html?hpid=topnews
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jonknee
If by anywhere you mean a small part of one country, then you would be
correct.

Update: The title has been changed, it originally said that this year there
were no acorns anywhere.

~~~
ingenium
_Zell began to do some research. He found Internet discussion groups,
including one on Topix called "No acorns this year," reporting the same thing
from as far away as the Midwest up through New England and Nova Scotia. "We
live in Glenwood Landing, N.Y., and don't have any acorns this year. Really
weird," wrote one. "None in Kansas either! Curiouser and curiouser."_

Sounds to me like it's pretty significant portion of the US.

~~~
jonknee
Except people don't post online that they have acorns. It's sort of like
looking at Mac Fixit and deciding that all Macs are broken.

Also from the article:

> But many skeptics say oaks in other regions are producing plenty of acorns

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ericb
I'm in Boston. Plenty of acorns on my street.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Billerica, north of Boston: I can report missing acorns.

A month ago my father-in-law and his relatives were exchanging missing-acorn
stories, because the big oaks in his yard (I don't know what species) didn't
produce any this year, and he's curious. He seems to think it was fairly
unusual, and he's lived with those trees for decades and decades.

I guess it's not just him.

It would appear that something is up. Let's all hope that it's something
transient.

~~~
modoc
Chelmsford, near Billerica: I have a ton of oak trees on my land, lots of
fallen leaves, and no acorns. I didn't think about it until I saw this post
though.

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gojomo
I'd guess that the trees in a region have synchronized their reproductive
cycles as an adaptation, like cicadas: hide from predators (thinning their
ranks) for a period, then overwhelm predators the next period.

~~~
patio11
Either that, or they've adapted:

1) Produce no new acorns.

2) Environmentalists respond by planting hundreds of thousands of trees.

3) Trees laugh to selves very, very quietly.

(It is a joke, since the time scales are wrong, but the core is serious: if
humans are the dominant selection pressure on the environment, then "natural"
selection means "achieving maximum fitness for what the humans like".)

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DanielBMarkham
Favorite quote:

"...If you're a squirrel, it's a big worry..."

Hacker News. News for hackers.

And worried squirrels.

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davi
[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/7gj3q/where_did_all...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/7gj3q/where_did_all_the_acorns_go_no_acorns_this_year/)

(Shakes cane.)

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dskhatri
Last year it was bees going missing[1]. Has anyone read any explanations about
that phenomenon?

[1]
[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22where+have+all+t...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22where+have+all+the+bees+gone%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=)

~~~
rms
Not really.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder>

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jerf
It's always a good year for something. It's always a bad year for something.
You hear about how it's a bad year for corn, or a good year for mosquitos, but
you never hear about how it was a great year for strawberries. (Or how it was
a bad year for mosquitos unless the report can work in an angle about
mosquitos being the foundation of the ecosystem.)

The mere fact that acorns didn't drop is not, in itself, intrinsically
interesting. It's _always_ a bad year for something, that's what ecosystem
diversity is about. The closer you look at the world around you, the more you
notice the major variations in the output of plant life. The mere fact of
variation is uninteresting.

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Arubis
So THAT'S why my mother was leaving walnuts on the porch. (In central
Connecticut at the moment.) Hadn't asked yet. Wacky.

Flying back home tomorrow, I wonder if there's anything on the ground in
Texas...

~~~
muerdeme
According to my Dad, the acorn crop has been so good in central Texas this
year that corn feeders have been (relatively) ineffective at luring in deer.

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fallentimes
Can you please change the title to accurately reflect the context of the
article (see _jonknee's_ comment).

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sdurkin
I have acorns, northeast Pennsylvania.

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kingkongrevenge
Hasn't this fall been unusually cold and early? We had frosts in mid-October
here, which is abnormal.

