Re: Acer rubrum, excessive seed production
nstairs@advanstar.ag.uiuc.edu
Wed, 19 Aug 1998 08:40:34 -0500
My understanding has been that trees do periodically have heavy seed years. This is particularly important in the forest industry for seedling production as a good cone crop provides a good seed supply for the reforestation demands. It may be that the trees try and maximize species survival by producing heavy seed crops periodically, even without stress. The only info regarding maples that I have refers to sugar maple, which states that they have heavy seed every two to five years. I would imagine that there would be some similarity for other maple species as well. The amount of seed produced by a tree can be affectde by temperature extremes, condition of the tree, presence or absence of competition and the time elapsed since the last heavy crop was borne.
Hope this helps, Nancy Stairs