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
Dwarf Beech Dwarf Beech The Dwarf Beech, "Fagus sylvatica" Tortuosa Group, is a rare Cultivar Group of the European Beech with less than 1500 older specimens in Europe. It is also known as Twisted Beech or Parasol Beech. It is a wide-spreading tree with distinctive twisted and contorted branches that are quite pendulous at their ends. With its short and twisted trunk the Dwarf Beech grows more in width than height, only seldom reaching a height of more than 15 m. It sometimes grows from seed and has formed colonies in Sweden ("Vresboken"), Denmark ("Vrange bøge"), Germany ("Süntel-Buchen"), France ("Faux de Verzy")