Seed crops for many tree species were notably high this year, with sugar maple and red maple being particularly prodigious.
This past spring saw a landscape dotted with the yellowish maple flowers which precede by a week or two the light green of the new leaves. The seeds ripen in the late summer, will helicopter down to the ground just before leaf fall, and will germinate next spring.
Producing a heavy seed crop requires a lot of energy; consequently, many red maples were very slow to leaf out this year. Still, periodic heavy seed crops are normal, and longterm health impacts are the exception, according to Barbara Burns, a resource protection specialist for Forests, Parks and Recreation. She said that a recent exception occurred in 1993, when many white ash had thin foliage and branch dieback following a heavy seed crop in 1992.
What can happen is that the carbohydrates normally used for leaf growth, bud development and winter survival instead are used for seed production. With depleted starch reserves, trees can be more susceptible to other stresses.
Burns said that one potential stressor, the pear thrip, wasn't bothersome because this year's thrip population was low. However, feeding on flowers enables thrips to produce more offspring, so entomologists will be closely monitoring thrip populations going into 1995.
Maple seeds are not a highly prized food source, being eaten in the absence of better feed. Mice and voles find little competition for them unless other foods are unavailable to seed eaters. That shouldn't be the case this year as hophornbeam seeds are plentiful for grouse and turkeys, as are fir and spruce seeds for squirrels, chipmunks and grouse.