Found out last week that a single mature oak can drop over 10,000 acorns in one season.
I read it in an arborist journal while waiting for a repair and it blew my mind because I always figured it was way less, has anyone else noticed a huge mast year messing with their cleanup schedules?
Man, 10,000 acorns sounds about right for a good year. I remember one fall a few seasons back where my whole yard was just carpeted in them, and I was raking for like two weekends straight... ended up just using a leaf blower to push them into a giant pile, but then the squirrels went crazy and spread them all back out again. It's wild how one tree can just totally dominate your cleanup plans like that.
Those squirrels know exactly what they're doing too, they'll stash them in every flower pot and gutter within a block radius. One year I counted seventeen baby oaks sprouting from just one corner of my garden where they'd buried their haul.