No Maple Seeds for 2020?

[TapTapTap]

I wish I got a photo last year of all of the maple seeds. We were building our patio and they became a serious nuisance. I was sweeping up shovel fulls and I worried that they'd be sprouting up between the pavers. This year - nothing! I can't find a single seed. So what's up? Yes, it's been a dry year. And I can imagine that the prolific seeding is cyclical. But no seeds! Go figure.

Has anyone else noticed there are no seeds this year? Or is it just our sugarbush.

On the positive side, wow look at all of the little maple sprouts that appeared in 2020.

[DrTimPerkins]

Sugar maple are regional mast seeders. They produce a lot of seeds every 3-7 years, with little in intervening seasons. Seed production is highly energy demanding. Crowns sometimes are thin the season after a heavy seed year, and there is one (extremely flawed) study suggesting sap sugar is lower in the season after seeding. Another possible reason for masting, which is not at all unusual in plants, is to reduce progeny loss to seed and seedling predation. Even some animals do the same in that they will all calve in a very short time period. Fish are similar in spawning. Just too many around for predators to eat them all.

[Aaron Stack]

I noticed the lack of seeds this year in the lone Norway in my back yard. Last year there was a ton, took two full days of raking to get them out of the lawn in the fall, then in the spring there were so many after the snow melted it felt like I didn't rake at all. I wondered if it was drought related and what the eventual impact on sugar content would be. I thought I read somewhere, probably here, that a low seed count lead to higher sugar content and am looking forward to recording numbers with my refractometer.

[MapleMark753]

We have had zero seeds this year on any of our sugar maples, or black maples either for that matter. First year that I remember that there have not been any really. On the other hand, our silvers (seed in spring, not fall) were prolific seeders this year.
2020 has been a strange year (brutal in some ways) all around, with only a few normal things. Even nature.

[TapTapTap]

Another possible reason for masting, which is not at all unusual in plants, is to reduce progeny loss to seed and seedling predation.

it worked. I have small maples everywhere.