BEECH TREES AND THE NATURALLY OCCURRING FOOD SOURCE

WE LOVE OUR CORNISH TREES

Who doesn’t love trees?  Cross onto the other side of Roughtor Road from The Platt and you can stand within the canopy supported by large trunks and branches of very mature Common Beech. Shelter, food and a safe habitat is provided by these giants. They are not the only trees in the vicinity as there are mature Sycamores and Oaks. Strikingly, courses of streams, are marked out by the verdant growth on their banks. I am lucky that I know the area and feel good within the sight of these wonderful giants.

But there is more to them than that.  As summer matures the seeds, nuts and acorns develop. After the two summer storms had given these trees a good thrashing the beech nuts crunched underfoot. I saw a fat Wood Pigeon pecking away in the middle of the road as I walked out with the dogs. Such trees are a wonderful food source for Greater Spotted Woodpeckers, various members of the Tit family, garden birds too, like the Blackbird and Chaffinch. One woodland bird that is the arch nut taker is the Jay and it is an important player in distributing both beech nuts and acorns. Ground feeders can benefit  and it is said that Badgers, mice and others will feast too. If I had been more alert I would have gathered some and put them into a feeder to see how popular these nuts would be compared to peanuts, fat balls and meal worms. It would be great to prove the experts right.

It appears that this was a glut year for beech nuts and this is what is said about those years for the trees and the species that feed on them.

“One of the main theories for this behaviour is ‘predator satiation’. Take oak and beech as an example again. Animals like squirrels, jays, mice and badgers feed on the acorns and beech nuts. When the trees produce smaller crops for a few consecutive years, they are in effect keeping the populations of these animals in check. But during a mast year, the trees produce more food than the animals can possibly eat.

This abundance causes a boom in populations of small mammals like mice. More importantly, it guarantees some will be left over to survive and grow into new trees. Mast years have a major evolutionary advantage for the tree. Producing nuts is costly work and slightly stunts the tree’s growth, but as it tends to happen every 5-10 years, it’s worth the payoff for some of the crop to germinate into new saplings.”