From small acorns towering dreams take root and grow

Star Ledger ^ | 10.25.06 | CHRISTINA JOHNSON

[Coleus]

Amid the squirrels and jays pouncing on acorns early this fall was 10-year-old Junior Girl Scout Amanda Diacont. As Tropical Storm Ernesto whipped the white oaks around her family's vacation campsite near Cape May, Amanda poked out of her canvas tent and swept falling acorns into empty milk jugs, working to earn her Inchworm of Service badge by contributing to the state Forest Service annual acorn collection. She filled 2 1/2 containers.

"Every five minutes we would go out and get some more," said Amanda, who is from Ringoes, Hunterdon County. "I probably could have filled 10-ish, but my mom said we had to pack up." Each fall, acorns are collected across the state by volunteer homeowners, scouts and schoolchildren, carted to collection points in milk jugs, pretzel buckets and plastic bags, and sown in fields at the state nursery in Jackson, Ocean County, as part of the "Today's Acorns = Tomorrow's Trees" program.

Last year, volunteers gathered 80,000 acorns and, with the arrival of spring, the 50,000 seedlings not lost to freezing temperatures or forest animals were distributed for planting. "Last year was the best year ever for the acorns, it was phenomenal," said Nancy Van Fleet, the lawn and garden manager at Agway in Flemington, a regional drop-off point for the ambitious scouts of the Rolling Hills council. "Remember, we were in a drought, and so trees tend to produce a lot of nuts when they are stressed to make sure their species stays around."

[Coleus]

When it came time to drive the haul to Jackson, Van Fleet struggled to shut the door on two vans brimming with acorns. This year is looking good, too. Last week, the PTO and schoolchildren of Red Bank elementary school in Thorofare, a section of West Deptford Township in Gloucester County, rounded up 343 gallons of nuts, according to a count by the principal, Brian Gismondi. "They filled an entire pickup truck," said Joe Battersby, the state nursery's superintendent.

The campaign to help oak trees began in earnest in 1988. Before that, the state was focused on growing pine trees to replenish the Pinelands, gashed by damage from the logging, glass, charcoal and iron works industries. "Since the Pinelands is all back in pine, the shift has been to reforest northern New Jersey, and oak grows much better in those alluvial soils," Battersby said. In greatest demand among public and private landowners is the state tree, the shady red oak, with the reliable pin, chestnut and white oaks right behind. The collection is going well so far, said Battersby. Still, he said, "we're still hurting for black oak. Also, I'm trying to grow more for wetlands, so I need more pin oak, willow oak and swamp white oak."

At the nursery, the staff is still sorting through the nut harvest, dumping the loot into baths to skim off the hollow ones that rise to the surface, and sorting them by species. The floaters are taken away by people who feed wildlife. What doesn't go into the ground goes into a cooler; the nuts are labeled, kept moist and used as backup stock. The nursery seedlings are available at low prices in the spring. But a state law mandates third-graders are entitled to one free seedling when their schools register with the nursery before March. The idea is to make Earth Day and Arbor Day studies more fun and relevant.

Last year 38,000 third-graders received seedlings, to plant anywhere they wished. If they survive the ride home in the backpack, most wind up in the backyard, reckons Battersby.
"Every once in a while a parent will stop in and say 'My son brought one of those home eight years ago, and after bumping it with a lawn mower a few times, I said it would never grow, and now it's 18 feet tall,'" he said.

More information about the Today's Acorns = Tomorrow's Trees program may be found at DEP's Parks and Forests Web site, which lists drop-off locations and important directions for collection. The Third Grade Free Tree Team program registration is also at the Web site, which may be accessed through the State Forest Service link at http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/

[Publius]

It would be nice if they could plant blight-resistant chestnuts, black walnuts and elms. Oaks are wonderful, but the original forests of New Jersey (outside the Pine Barrens) were a lot more diverse.