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
The Weeping Beech had grown to a spread of 85’ and a height of 65’. The girth of the trunk was 14’ and that year it was designated a living landmark. Parsons, of namesake nearby Parsons Blvd, supplied most of the original trees and shrubs in Manhattans Central Park and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. By 1998 the tree had been in decline for 30 years and had suffered injections of fertilizer to prolong its 151-year life, but to no avail. It was taken down in 1999 and its progeny, seven of which are in the tree grove at Weeping Beech Park, are all