IT'S A SEEDY SEASON

HOW MILLIONS OF TREES COVERING VAST REGIONS OF EARTH COMMUNICATE SO WELL IS A MYSTERY AND A MARVEL, WRITES MARGARET CARNEY

Did you ever in your life see so many shrubs and trees in full bloom? Flowers so thick on crabapples, lilacs, chokecherry, service berry, wild plums?

On maples, mountain ash, horse chestnuts and birch trees? Red oaks in my neck of the woods were loaded with their tasselled green blossoms, signalling a huge crop of acorns come fall, if conditions are right. That's what all the flowers are about, of course: seed production to carry on the species.

Conifers are in the act as well — spruce, cedars and balsam fir covered with their own unique coneshaped blossoms. I brushed against a small, white spruce at a tree farm and shook loose a cloud of pollen, surprised that some young evergreens could be already eager to reproduce. Even white pines, Ontario's provincial tree, are in sync with this seed-bearing bonanza. It takes two seasons for their cones to ripen, and last year they were the only evergreens to produce them, somehow knowing ahead of time to get in step for this major mast year.

That's what farmers and scientists call it, the one season out of four or five when every species of woody plant puts most of their energy toward reproduction instead of growth. The record of mast years is written in a tree's annual rings, always thinner than the others. No matter if their flowers are wind-pollinated, like evergreens, maples and willows, or assisted by bats, birds, bees and other insects, as all the showy petalled blossoms are, trees manage to co-operate in a great outpouring of fecundity.

Why it benefits trees to put out bumper crops together has to do with population control of animals eager to feast on their nutritious, fat-rich nuts and berries. Squirrels, mice, voles and other rodents have much smaller families in lean years, so forests hold back their bounty, then suddenly produce such a great abundance of food their predators can't possibly eat it all.

How millions of trees covering vast regions of Earth communicate so well is a mystery and a marvel. Even forests in Southeast Asia containing hundreds of different tree species all mast together, every two to 12 years. Their roots are all connected by an intricate web of fungi, and scientists have discovered some trees use chemical signalling, giving off pheromones that are picked up and sensed by their neighbours. But who decides when the time it right?

How they agree on a year and then all manage to co-operate for their mutual good should be a lesson and an inspiration for us humans.

Nature queries: mcarney1490@gmail.com or 905725-2116.