Is it any surprise the acorn’s gone missing in the District, after all the noise that conservatives made before the election?

In all seriousness, when scientists start to use terms like “zero year” for just about anything, it’s time to be very afraid. While botanists are concerned for the state of the oak in the area, even those of us who haven’t noticed the acorn’s absence have reason to be concerned — and for more than area forests. According to one naturalist, this year was supposed to be a banner year for various area oak trees, making the disappearance all the freakier.

Among the prevailing theories to explain the disappearance of acorns across the east coast is an especially wet spring, which might have washed away the pollen. But that’s at best a stab at an explanation and not a likely one at that, according to one forester, who mused that we’d need to see “[f]orty days of constant rain” for this sort of Children-of-Men effect.

You have to wonder whether global warming is the cause. And while that would be a shocking revelation, it wouldn’t exactly be a surprise: According to Science Dialy, human activity (in the form of industrialization and pollution) is prompting the planet’s sixth mass extinction, one that is expected to kill off half the world’s species of life.

This writer has noticed an uptick in gross ginkgo fruits in Columbia Heights. Not a great tradeoff for the acorn, if that’s what’s happening. Far from noticing a lack of acorns, though, I’m convinced I’ve seen them all over.

Readers? Got an oak tree in your yard? Seen starving squirrels on your block? How does this phenomenon look in your neighborhood?

Photo by philliefan99.