As the fall season approaches, Mike Ortmeier is preparing to break out his broom, dustpan and new portable leaf blower to add to the nearly 8,000 pounds of acorns he’s collected for Virginia over the past 13 years. 

The dedication shown by Ortmeier, an Arlington native and retiree, to the nuts has earned him notoriety within the Virginia Department of Forestry, which operates an annual acorn collection program. 

His acorn hauls, along with nuts from other native tree species collected by volunteers throughout the state, will be planted at the department’s Augusta Nursery Center to grow into seedlings. 

This story was reported and written by The Virginia Mercury

The seedlings are then typically sold to landowners for reforestation purposes, providing numerous environmental benefits like decreasing carbon in the atmosphere, improving water quality and reducing temperatures in heat-stressed areas. 

Augusta Nursery Center Assistant Manager Joshua McLaughlin said the program would also not be possible without volunteers like Ortmeier. He estimates that one-third — or approximately 1 million — of the seeds planted at the nursery last year came from the public. Donations also go toward starting seedlings that are then sold.

“Without that public, I don’t know what we would do,” McLaughlin said. 

If the nursery doesn’t get enough donations of a certain seed, the state sometimes has to turn to suppliers, which McLaughlin said can be expensive for an operation that isn’t allowed to take monetary donations. 

Ortmeier said a simple acorn lying on the ground “is really valuable — it just takes somebody to go and pick it up.”

With the collection season looming, Ortmeier said collecting the seeds is a “simple and easy process” anyone can do. However, he said increasingly unpredictable acorn fall seasons, coupled with a limited amount of locations throughout Virginia to drop off the nuts and a lack of public awareness, are limiting the program’s potential. 

Unpredictable seasons

McLaughlin said the department plans to announce when it will begin accepting acorn donations early in September. Although the collection season officially began Sept. 7 last year, he said increasingly unpredictable changes in weather and temperature mean it’s hard to determine an exact date when acorns will begin to drop from trees. 

While historically acorns have started falling in early October, parts of Virginia have had such dry weather this year that McLaughlin said he wouldn’t be surprised if they began in the next week. 

Furthermore, he said he isn’t currently seeing as many acorns on white oak trees as he usually does at this time of year. He attributes the abnormality to Virginia’s late frost and dry weather this year.

“You’ve had a lot of trees abort acorns early summer, which means they pretty much went through and dumped 60, 70% of acorns on the ground early before they even developed,” McLaughlin said. “That’s because the tree couldn’t take the developmental stage because it didn’t have enough water.”

Potomac Conservancy Senior Director of Community Conservation Alexsis Dickerson and McLaughlin pointed toward climate change as a main factor in the increasing unpredictability of the season. The timing of when a seed will drop and its quality depend on stressors endured by a tree in the previous season, Dickerson said, like droughts or excessive flooding. 

“All of that is just going to contribute to the stress that the tree is under,” Dickerson said. “That can lead to it dropping acorns prematurely because the tree essentially just has to conserve its energy and use it in the best way possible.”

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