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 Poem Tree The Poem Tree The Poem Tree was a beech tree with a poem carved into it by Joseph Tubb, located on Castle Hill at Wittenham Clumps in Oxfordshire, England. The tree, which was believed to be around 300 years old, collapsed through a combination of long-standing rot and inclement weather in July 2012. It died in the 1990s and after that, rotted completely while standing. The poem was carved in the 1840s. A stone, including a transcription and rubbing of the poem, was erected close to the tree in 1994 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the carving. Tubb carved