Awww, nuts!

Walnuts, hickory nuts and beech nuts are all in relative abundance on our property this year. Trees that are not producing much mast this year are buckeyes and oak trees. Regardless, the squirrels are working hard, especially on the hickory nuts. It is not uncommon to wake up in the morning to hear little drops among the leaves, only to realize it isn't raining. Well, not from the sky, anyway. It is raining nuts, though! The metal roof on our house amplifies the sound when nuts and nut bits rain down from the trees. I have an image in my mind of the squirrels maniacally hurling husks and shell down at our house, laughing merrily in the early dawn light as they wake us from sound sleep.

Bits and pieces of nut shell fragments litter the property during late summer and early autumn. Can you pick them out among the gravel?

In addition to all the tiny shell remains, there are also a good number of nuts still in their husks. I can't tell if this one's been chewed, or if it's just rotten (or maybe both).

So what happened here? What caused a squirrel to gnaw and gnaw and gnaw on this hickory nut and then toss it away? Did it decide it wasn't yet ripe enough? Did it get disturbed by a hawk or another squirrel and decided it was better to abandon its post and its meal rather than stay where it was? Whatever the cause for abandonment, it gives us a good chance to see the kind of damage a squirrel's teeth can do. I sure don't ever want to be bitten by a squirrel!

This nut turned out to be a waste of time. It was more intact when I found it, but upon breaking it open, I found that the nut meat was not ripe. If you look closely, you can see some shininess to the meat right in the center of the photo. That is one raw nut. Yuck!

Just to give you an idea of size, here's a husked nut in the hand. I think this is a Shellbark Hickory nut. We definitely have Shagbark Hickories on our property, and this nut, along with some others I found, are much larger than the Shagbark nuts. I'll try to find some nuts from each species of tree to make some comparisons at a later date.

Much daintier is the nut of the Beech tree. I usually only find the husk after it has come open and dispersed the seed pods, but this year I have found quite a few where the seeds are still in the husk.

Without much effort, the 2 seed pods slip right out of the spiny husk. The seed pods kind of remind me of Hershey's kisses, but without the flat bottom.

What nuts are you seeing around these days?

When friends help you learn

I like throwing quizzes out there from time to time, and I think I stumped a few of you with my nut photo in the last post:

A couple of you, though, correctly identified it as a Beech nut hull. Good eyes, Jain and Nina! To be fair, anyone reading the post who lives west of Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, or Louisiana, or most of Canada (except the extreme eastern-most portion of the country) would not be familiar with the American Beech tree or its nut because it only grows in the eastern third of the continent.

I made this quiz a little tougher than it should have been, because the nut hull was photographed from a funny angle, and it was seriously sprung open. I don't know that I have any photos of a closed Beech nut, because they all seem to be open and empty by the time I find them.


I want to thank Ruthie and Julie, who both guessed different species of hazelnuts. After doing a little research, I can understand their guesses. The reason I am thanking them is because they helped me to identify the American Hazelnut. When images of that shrub's fruit popped up on my computer screen today, I said, "No way!" Ladies, you helped me identify something that I photographed 2 years ago but had no idea how to begin looking up.

American Hazelnut fruit, photographed August 16, 2008
I was very excited about this, because these photos were taken just down the road from my house. I had no idea hazelnuts grew in Ohio, let alone right in my own neighborhood! I walked down the road this afternoon and found the plant in the spot I remembered. I was able to locate and harvest a handful of nuts, but I would say most had already been snatched up by the local wildlife. Next spring I will be on the look-out for the teeny, tiny female flowers that the shrub produces (the male flower is a catkin, some of which were still hanging from the branches), and will try to harvest some more nuts earlier in the season before the squirrels, chipmunks, deer and Blue Jays, to name a few, beat me to them. I read today that they grow well in the shade, and are good understory plants. Hmmmmm.... we have lots of shade and understory plants growing on our property. Could be something to try establishing in our land.

Thanks, friends, for helping me learn something new!