Managing Mast

Mast - the fruits and nuts of trees - is, for many Tree Farmers, the most interesting feature of their forest.  Compare a forest with a diversity of wild fruits and nuts to a monotonus monoculture of conifers.  Fruit and nut trees focus our attention to the events of each season.  We  visit our woods to see dogwoods flower in the Spring, to seek wild plums in the summer, crabapples in early fall.  Hunters find themselves drawn to stands of oaks during hunting season. 

Mast adds details to a day in the woods.  A fox dropping in the path, full of persimmon seeds, informs you of current events.  Where acorn mast crunches underfoot you became alert to look for deer or squirrels.  A stump festooned with nutshells is evidence that this is more than a mere commercial forest. 

Mast adds complexity and enhances perception of subtle details in a forest.  Mast is the personality of the forest. 

Hard Mast refers to nuts of beech, chestnut, chinquapin, hickory, walnut, and oaks.  Fruits are soft mast of crabapples, haws, hawthorns, red cedar, cherries, plums, dogwoods, hollies, black gum, tupleo, elderberry, hackberry, mulberry, and the like.  Certain pines produce quality seeds for wildlife.  Honey locust is unique; deer and rabits love it footlong, hard spiral pods, which have a sweet, gummy layer inside.

Intensive forest management for timber tends to weed out less commercially productive trees and other vegetation, to drift toward monoculture and away from diversity.  Gradually, the forest becomes less interesting to the naturalist and to the wildlife.  To understand how to produce more mast, consider the care of a single tree in it's youth, growing in the open field, free and clear of shade and root competition.  This tree - be it an oak, crabapple, persimmon, or other desireable mast producer - has a chance to reach its maximum mast producing potential.  To help this tree, remove nearby trees that threaten to capture its sun and nutrient elements.  Older trees growing singly or in small groves in the open will also benefit from fertilizer treatment if they are good producers.  These islands of mast production will be a magnet for wildlife for decades, maybe centuries, depending on the species.  Guard them well.  They are treasures.