North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Mike Levine" <mlevine@umich.edu>]

The acorns of white oaks and their relatives in the white oak "group" tend
to have the least amount of tannins in them.  These tannins are what causes
the bitter flavor in acorns.  For this reason acorns from trees in the white
oak "group" were/are most often used by Native Americans to make their
flour.  Bur oaks have the largest acorns in my area.  It is somewhat
variable, however.  I have seen bur oaks with acorns the same size as white
oaks, but I have also seen bur oaks with incredibly huge acorns.  If the cap
of the acorn hairy/wooly/scurfy that would be a key character in determining
if what you saw in Lousville was a bur oak  This character has earned the
bur oak the nickname hippy-of-the-oaks.  Another character for ID would be
if the leaves that are growing on the sunniest parts of the tree look like
they have a wasp waist.  The Bur oak happens to be the city tree of Ann
Arbor.

Mike Levine
Ann Arbor, MI


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Franc" <franc@oregonfast.net>
To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 06, 2002 11:26 PM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] acorns


> When I was in Louisville, KY a few years ago there were acorns on the
> ground in a Park there that were as big as a quarter and 2 inches long.
> I tried eating a couple and they were not half bad. I was amazed at the
> size of them . I have never seen any that big on the east or west coast.
> I don't know what kind of oak it was but the trees were huge, at least
> 18 inches at the butt or larger and they seemed to be 150 to 200 feet
> tall. I had no way to measure them.
> Sam
>
> Ginda Fisher wrote:
>
> > I have an abundance of acorns this year.  I thought last year was the
> > "on" year, but my white oaks are as productive as ever.
> >
> > Is there anything I can do with the acorns, other than grinding them
> > to pulp as I drive up and down the driveway?
> >
> > The tree closest to the driveway has very large nuts:  nearly as big
> > around as a dime, and more than an inch long.  The other two front
> > yard trees have much smaller nuts, more like the ones I grew up with,
> > a bit smaller around and not much longer than wide.  All are
> > prolific.  all are also sprouting right and left, but at least a
> > quarter of the nuts are clean, intact, and unsprouted.  I've gathered
> > a couple of cups of them, and am about to gather some more, mostly
> > just to get them off the driveway.
> >
> > I'm looking for something relatively easy and useful for a suburban
> > family.  I don't have pigs, and I'd rather not spend 50 hours
> > preparing something that only the starving would eat.  On the other
> > hand, I've tried odd things in the past.  (Grinding eggshells into the
> > pasta to boost the calcium content was not a winner, but adding
> > crandall currants or cranberries to apple pie was.)
> >
> > I also have some black oak acorns (less prolific this year) and access
> > to red oak acorns, which I find collected on my car when I pick it up
> > at the lot at the end of the day.  Red oak acorns are enormous, and
> > always look tasty to me, but they taste awful.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Ginda Fisher
> > eastern Mass, where fall seems to be here, at least today.
> >
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