Often as I wait for my ride to work I sit on a stone wall beside the edge of a gorge which runs through the town. A box elder leans over the slope, currently thick with bunches of samaras. Another fruit is also present. Grape leaves entwine around the tree’s center and grapes drape in scant bunches.

Nowadays most people consume cultivated grapes like those grown in the surrounding wine country, leaving the smaller wild grapes for wildlife. In this case that might mostly be the gangs of introduced starlings which provide a year-round soundtrack while I wait for my ride. Farther afield plenty of birds and mammals will relish these sweet treats, like a gray catbird I watched picking and choosing among grapes hanging in a tree near my work. Unlike your average human consumer, these wild consumers will then scatter the seeds about with a little fertilizer.

Lately when we go out, we run over the baseball-sized fruit of a black walnut which litters the end of the driveway. The flattened and blackened remains don’t stay on the gravel long, and sometimes we see squirrels carrying them away. If we didn’t have commerce to rely on, the nuts from black walnuts and hickories would be a better target for foraging than greens or fruit. Unlike the sugary grapes, nuts are full of fat and protein and store a lot longer. These traits appeal to the squirrels and jays as well as humans.

Acorns are a traditional food source which is less appealing to modern human foragers. This year we’ve had a large crop. Acorns lie everywhere, alternately brown, tan, burnished red or streaked with different colors. Caps lie askew, empty of their nuts. Some acorns are excavated, leaving shells empty of meat. On a walk I picked up two green acorns with orange rings where the cap had been. I could see the appeal of harvesting large quantities for flour, despite the need for long soakings or boilings to get rid of tannins. They felt waxy and cool in my palm with a satisfying heft that would quickly reward a forager. Although they might already harbor weevil or moth eggs whose occupants would soon hollow out their insides. We most notice vertebrate herbivores, but often arthropods and fungi are more destructive from a plant’s point of view.

Views of our acorn crop:







My mother-in-law often recites “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” It’s true that an oak tree grows from something comparatively tiny. If you consider the massive quantities of acorns produced versus the small amount which ever take root, each mighty oak can be seen as the result of a mighty effort.