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
Beech Settlement northeast, and Carthage, southeast. The Indiana Central, which began its service to the area in 1853, had depots at Knightstown and at Charlottesville, about northwest of the settlement. Although Beech Settlement no longer exists, a few significant structures remain, including Mount Pleasant Beech Church, built ca. 1840, and the Walker Jeffries homestead, ca. 1850. Beech Settlement Beech Settlement was a rural settlement in Ripley Township, Rush County, Indiana. Its early settlers were free people of color (most of them migrated from eastern North Carolina and Virginia) and a small number of free blacks, who came to the area with Quakers.