Brian: Absolutely right. And so who benefits. Right. So in a mast year. Well yeah. Mice, squirrels, deer, turkey, some woodpeckers and jays, you know, they go for the acorns. And again, this is just acorns. So other trees do this as well. And they may have, insects that feed off of them, but we often forget about well, what about the weevils that feed on acorns.
Absolutely. They have a bumper year or two. Right. And then who feeds on the weevils. Oh, you know, maybe some birds or whatever that we will becomes, you know, the Beatles. And then you know, going beyond that. So okay, so we have a bunch of chipmunks and a bunch of squirrels and a bunch of mice while the owls are happy.
Oh, right. The hawks are happy because they have a bigger food source. Unfortunately, when we have a lot more like mice and deer, we may also have more ticks. And so that could maybe negatively affect, say, us from like Lyme disease or something from that aspect. So yeah, these masting years, you know, ripple effects. Right. That just keep going on and on and on.
So you know, the food web and the ecological, you know, just entanglement I guess you can say, of just a masting tree are just phenomenal. Right.
Mickenzee: Right. There's such a huge impact. And you could trace it for thousands of species.
Brian: Absolutely.
Mickenzee: All right. And our last question today is why do leaves fall off the trees during the fall? We call it that but why is it?
Brian: We call it autumn. And no I mean it right. Aptly named fall for Falling Leaves. And so if you look at the question as in so fall for us here in Wisconsin, right. What's happening? What comes next? Winter. And if we think about it, you know, what is everything else doing in winter or what's not available in winter?
Traditionally, winters is very scarce for resources like food or water, things like that. For animals, for example, a bear. a bear goes into hibernation because it's waiting, you know, it actually stores up energy. And then it kind of goes asleep because I can't find enough water. I can't find enough berries because they're not out there.
So I'm just going to take the winter off and I'll wake up in spring. It's really no different with a tree. Right? So our leaves are out there. They're a pretty expendable part of the tree. The tree knows it's going to have them for a year and then and lose them. Those leaves, there are powerhouses while they're there.
Right? They're full of chlorophyl. And they are, photosynthesizing. Right. So they're creating the a lot of the food or the energy components that the tree needs to grow, but it's creating enough that there's a little extra left over. So it's also storing iy it's building for winter. When winter comes, winter is very harsh on leaves. They're very sensitive to not having enough water.
In fact, in the summer if you have a tree and it's not getting enough water, it starts to wilt just like any other plant. And those leaves can dry up and get crispy. Well, here in Wisconsin in winter, I don't know about you, but my skin gets extremely dry. I mean, it is very dry here in winter.
Yes, we have snow, which is water, but it's not really available to the plants. The ground is frozen, the roots are living and they're alive, but they aren't as active as they are in summer. So the big part of it is water conservation. And the other aspect of, you know, leaves are, are they're kind of expensive for the tree to put out there.
So they take energy to get out there and they take energy to maintain. And when it comes around to fall, you know, the light isn't we don't have as much light. The days are shorter. So are they producing as much food and energy? Nope. So they're costing a little bit more to be out there. And trees are very, very efficient.
So at some point they're like, oh, the cost benefit to having these leaves, the balance has tilted. Now it's more expensive to have the leaves than not. And so then what the leaves or the tree does is it forms what we call an abscission layer, which is a layer of cells between the stem of the leaf and, the branch.
And it then kind of closes off all the little vesicles, and the leaves get a little bit, you know, the attachment becomes weaker and eventually it falls off. And it's crazy too, right? Because not all trees lose their leaves at the exact same time. Right. Or it's over a period of time
Mickenzee: And not all the leaves drop at once.
Brian: Absolutely. Well, and so that's crazy too, right. So the ginkgo tree. The ginkgo tree, it's kind of fun because they lose all their trees in about 24 hours. All their leaves in about 24 hours.
Mickenzee: Whoa.
Brian: Boom. It's great. Just you know, if that's all you had, you have to work one day and you're done, right? So that's awesome.
Other trees will hold on like Norway Maples tend to wait a little bit longer in the season. Maybe that's because they're not native here. And you know, in their environment, that was the better timing cue for them. Other trees like oak trees will actually hold onto some of their leaves, and we're not really sure exactly why they do that.
And like Beech trees, for example, when they're younger, will hold on to their leaves. And one of the theories behind that, again, is deer, right? Are browsing on those buds because those buds are again packed with energy. Yeah. Right. So they can spring forth in spring. And so one of the theories is that, you know, like the leaves, the dry, crunchy leaves like, are around those little bud tips and they're not as palatable.
Right. So the deer like, what is this gross papery leaf thing? I'm not going to eat this. And so they go elsewhere, for some easier buds. And it's kind of cool because if you ever get to, like, again, the Lake Michigan coast where we have a lot of beech trees in winter, you'll see these yellow leaves in the understory.
Because of all the little baby beech tree is still have all their leaves. And it's pretty phenomenal. And it's also pretty beautiful.
Mickenzee: Yeah, that's really cool.
Brian: Again, not a simple question.
Mickenzee: These are great questions. Oh my gosh I feel like I learned so much today. Thank you to the students at Lincoln Elementary for submitting your nature questions.
This was a great episode. And thank you, Brian, for taking time to teach us.
Brian: Yeah you bet it's been fun.
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