White Oak Acorns, A Deer's favorite food

Acorns from the White Oak Tree are one of the preferred foods on a whitetails grocery list. If you can find an area where the acorns are dropping than you have a very good chance at seeing deer. This year I think just happens to be a bumper crop of acorns, at least in my area. Their dropping like rain.

Acorn crops can vary greatly from year to year. During “heavy” years, acorns can rain down from the trees, almost covering the ground beneath them. In “sparse” years, one can travel from tree to tree and have difficulty locating more than a handful. The factors determining acorn production patterns are not well understood, but Koenig and Knops (1995) have demonstrated that weather at the time of flowering is likely an important contributing factor. Since oaks are wind-pollinated species, conditions during the pollination period that promote good pollen dispersal are believed to enhance acorn production. But there may also be other factors at work also. There are probably internal rhythms present within trees that also influence how many acorns are produced. In this instance, the almost total absence of white oak acorns last year may have contributed to good crops this year since trees were able to conserve resources that they are currently using to produce this abundant crop. Koenig et al. (1994) found a strong negative autocorrelation between crops from one year to the next which – especially for blue oak - supporting the notion that crops one year (or the lack thereof) can influence crops the subsequent year.

Another interesting thing about acorn production is that there are species that take one season from flowering till acorns mature, and there are species that require two seasons. In general, species in the white oak sub-genera take a single year, while species in the red or black oak sub-genera, take two years.