Why is this tree suddenly producing acorns?

My Mum has a tree next to her house. She moved in the house about 55 years ago. We have seen the tree grow from a small tree to what it is now. Suddently this year the tree is producing acorns. It has never done this before this year.

Does anybody know why it would suddenyl produce acorns this year?

 

@wanoennogs
Hope we are talking about an oak tree, a photo or two would help, as would your mothers location.
Oaks are wind pollinated, it could be that the tree has just reached maturity, it could be related to the weather or just good luck.
When you say next to your Mum's house how close?

 

It has been a particularly good year for acorns on many of the young oak trees around here. Most are far younger than 55 but still it has been the first year I have noticed them to have a crop of nuts so it could be that the conditions for acorn production this year have been better than other years. Also some trees pick particular years (mast years) to be more productive than others so that on a year where they produce more the animals that might try eat them all have too many to cope with and more get a chance to grow into trees.

Happy gardening!

 

I have noticed that it's an acorn year this year and I'm seeing them lying on pavements where I hadn't even realised there was an oak nearby. Very good year for hazelnuts too, so much so that the squirrels are leaving some for me to collect.

 

I would guess at least 50% of the acorns I'm seeing are infected with the knopper gall.

 

The warm and dry spring was perfect for pollination, so the oaks are having a mast year. Some trees have some whopping great acorns but there are plenty of trees with tiny ones as well.

 

I'm a cyclist and have favourite routes which I travel time and time again. This year, on certain routes, where trees are overhanging the paths and roads, there are thousands and thousands of acorns that have never been there on journeys from previous years.

I wasn't even aware there were so many oaks on my journeys! So yes, something barmy is going on with oaks this year.

 

I think that spring followed by the summer has produced pretty good fruit crops all round .

 

Same down here in Cornwall, lots of acorns on the ground. I'll have to look to see if the evergreen oaks are producing as well. A good year if you have free ranging pigs!

 

Free ranging pigs this brought back a memory

My mum was writing a book of her childhood, I persuaded her to do this after we lost Dad. In one chapter she wrote about a prank her and my aunty did.

During the war years living in the country the norm was to keep pigs along with other farm animals. My mums and her younger sisters job was at 8 yrs old to collect from the wood acorns for the pigs.
well one day um had a good idea, the farm just outside the village used to sell acorns a penny a potato sack full. mum knew where they stored the metal binns full of collected acorns.

and thinking its far quicker to take a few buckets full of already picked acorns as they had so many they wouldnt be missed.

on getting back in a shorter time her dad was suspicious , then out of the blue next morning at breakfast dads asking where they got the acorns dad was told just down the lane ,mum and sister swore blind thats wghere they got them. Grandad blew his top. tellinfg them he knew exactly where they were from. the acorns had a particular smell and faint markins and he reconised them as from old tommys who marked each barrel with how many buckets the bin contained.
Mum says he was in a right mood and told to take them back to old tommys. this was after mum and sister got a wallop for telling lies and taking what wasnt theres.

makes me laugh each time i see grandads pigs photos. he used to enter them in shows , mum wasnt as innocent that she made out !!!!!!

 

In the New Forest at this time of year pigs allowed to roam free so they can eat the acorns. This the right of Pannage which also still lives on in other parts of the UK. Acorns are poisonous to horses and cattle so the the pigs perform a vital service.
In Spain pigs forage for acorns in the cork oak groves and then get turned into Spanish Jambon.

 

It will be a very good winter for Jays, who eat acorns. They will be stashing them all over the place and of course starting off a few little baby oaks for the future.

 

We have hundreds of oak trees round here, so there's always a lot of acorns. Can't say I've noticed it being much different from any other year.
We often get little saplings appearing- I had one last year or the year before in the front garden. Squirrels [the unpleasant ones] bury the acorns everywhere. We don't have jays round here, but I expect other birds probably take them - corvids?

 

That's the thanks you get for working hard. Sounds like a lot of companies I worked for over the years.

 

This is the tree