Mast (botany) Mast seeding is defined as the highly variable production of fruit by a population. These intermittent pulses of food resources drive ecosystem-level functions and forest dynamics. The difference between a mast seeding year and a non-mast seeding year can be thousands of acorns, hickory nuts, beech nuts, etc. Mast seeding dominantly occurs in wind-pollinated tree species, but has also been observed in grasses and Dipterocarps. Masting, in the strict sense of the term, occurs only in monocarpic (or semelparous) species, whose members reproduce only once during their lifetime, then die. Hypothesis for the evolution of mast seeding can broadly be
Uholka-Shyrokyi Luh primeval beech forest area, were surveyed. Within each plot, all trees with a diameter at breast height (DBH) of 6 cm and more were measured. 97% of all the 6779 trees measured were European beech ("Fagus sylvatica" L.). The oldest beech trees were nearly 500 years. The largest tree was a wych elm ("Ulmus glabra" Huds.) with a DBH of 150 cm, whereas the largest beech tree had a DBH of 140 cm. 10 beech trees per hectare had a DBH of at least 80 cm. The number of living trees consisted of 435 trees per hectare with a basal area of 36.6