Syracuse.com - CNY 'mast' explosion: Area seeing eye-opening amounts of apples, berries and various nuts

[HuntingNY-News]

"I have never seen this large quantity of fruit that I've seen this year on the apples, walnuts, hickories, maple and ashes," said Donald J. Leopold, chairman of the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology at SUNY ESF

Some point to the warm spring with its lack of no frosts or cold snaps in its latter part that enabled flowers, such as these apple blossoms, to stay alive. Experts say its more complicated than that.Dennis Nett | [email protected] 

Mother Nature has more than provided for humans and wild animals alike this fall in Central New York with unprecedented amounts of apples, nuts and various berries.

The evidence is everywhere from residential yards, to farms, to the woods.

Local apple orchard owners see it with their bountiful harvests. This week, one grower, Abbott Farms in Baldwinsville, announced it has sold more apples than ever before but it still has a lot left over. Wednesday, the business allowed volunteers to pick their extra apples for free for use at local food pantries and charitable organizations.

Homeowners see it with the large amounts of crabapples on their trees and berries on the shrubs in their yards. Hunters and hikers are noticing larger, wild blue berries than normal and plentiful amounts of nuts coating the ground in the woods.

"I have never seen this large quantity of fruit that I've seen this year on the apples, walnuts, hickories, maple and ashes," said Donald J. Leopold, chairman of the Department of Environmental and Forest Biology at SUNY ESF. "And I've seen this extraordinary production, not only in upstate NY, but everywhere I've been in the Northeast and recently in Tennessee.

"Interestingly, it's an off year for the oaks (acorns)."

Biologists refer to fruits, berries and nuts as "mast." Soft mast are the fruits and berries. Hard mast are the nuts. The reason for this year's mast explosion appears to be a combination of weather, last year's poor growing season, cycles unique to each plant, and other ecological factors that scientists are still researching.

One simple answer is the huge mast crop was caused by this year's warm spring that was highlighted by a lack of late spring frost or cold snaps. The result was a bumper crop of fruit, berry and nut-generating flowers on plants, shrubs and trees.

"That ... and the bees," said Brian Underwood, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey who teaches at SUNY ESF. "The warm temperatures woke up the bees and they got busy pollinating all those flowers."

Bernd Blossey, an associate professor in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said part of the answer also lies with 2012's cold spring that killed a lot of flowers and buds, particularly those on apple trees. Local apple growers described last year as the worst crop since 1945, reporting losses of some 70 percent of their crop.

Despite it being an 'off year' for acorns, squirrels have more than enough to eat this fall.Dick Blume | [email protected] 

The apple trees responded, Blossey said, by building up extra reserves to fruit this year. Prompted by the favorable spring, the result was mass fruiting.

As for the nut-bearing trees, there's an ecological reason behind it.

"It's called predator satiation," Bloosey said. "The bumper crop overwhelms those animals that feed on the plants' fruit, producing more than they can handle - thus ensuring that some of the fruit (that contains seeds) produces new plants."

Scientists have been studying this phenomenon and there's no consensus yet about exactly why, or when this happens. The fact that most everything else is going gangbusters, but it's an off year for acorns has Blossey baffled.

"We have some oaks on campus and usually the ground underneath them is carpeted with acorns. There's very few this year," he said.

Blossey also said it's interesting how a good mast year is not limited to a single plant or tree, but manifests itself widely in the same species in a forest or a region - or sometimes, not.

Some researchers have suggested a chemical signal hypothesis, speculating that possibly trees are giving off some sort of chemical cue or signal to each other that results in an abundance of fruit or nuts.

Jim Sollecito, owner of Sollecito Landscaping Nursery in Onondaga Hill, said the abundance of apples on his land in Baldwinsville has kept the deer well-fed. He said there's three times as many apples as a normal year and when he walks through the woods "it smells like cider."

Sollecito offered another reason for the numerous apples. He said each year there's a natural thinning process that takes place during the early summer when a number of immature apples fall from the trees. He called it "the June drop." He said that didn't happen this year because of all the rain that fell that month.

"All those apples stayed on the trees and now they're ripening," he said.

Stacy McNulty, director of the Adirondack Ecological Center in Newcomb, which is a SUNY ESF field station, said "We're definitely seeing the same thing up here," when asked about the mast explosion. She said she's seeing great amounts of beech nuts on the ground.

"There's lots of food for deer and turkey. The blue jays are very happy right now," she said, adding. "Personally, I've never seen wild blueberries as large as the ones we're seeing this year."

A bear and its cub. The abundance of food in the Adirondacks should result in the birth of more bear cubs this spring, McNulty said.AP/National Park Service 

McNulty said there's all kinds of spin-offs for the wildlife, noting she and others are expecting an "uptick" in the mice population in the Adirondacks - along with an increase in the numbers of one of the Adirondack Park's larger residents.

Female black bears need to achieve a certain health and energy state before they'll reproduce, she said. The abundant food (nuts, berries) should take care of that.

"We're expecting an increase in the numbers of black bear cubs this spring," she said.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog

[growalot]

I find that interesting...although as my memory serves......ppl the mentioned more than once that their Apple's had a early drop.....also for me the acorn crop has been the best ever....

[Hock3y24]

Still lots of apples on trees here and acorns all over, first time In a while got pears in our tree

[Meat Manager]

I have Apples on trees that have not had them in the 6 years I've lived here...all along the roadsides you see piles of apples laying on the road.

 

Maybe it will draw enough bears up to 7J to open it up...that would be cool.

[growalot]

 

I find that interesting...although as my memory serves......ppl the mentioned more than once that their Apple's had a early drop.

 I meant the thinning early drop....actually the apple on my trees hung on the longest ever...and there are still a few...it was the hard freeze and high winds that finally got them a few days ago...but the deer cleaned them up which tells me there are few apples left out there...for they were slowly falling and just rotting earlier this fall when apples were every where...another reason I'm starting with food based scented oils....

[genesee_mohican]

I've never seen the abundance of acorns, walnuts, hickory nuts and apples that we have this year.  It's impressive.

[NYbuck50]

Definitley a banner year, though in the lean years the deer stick to crop fields and are more easily patternable. With food literally all over the place it was tough this season to pin them down to a specific area

[First-light]

All of the above along with plentiful mushrooms.