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Enter the nut trees. A decade into my reporting, a friend sent me a link to a TEDx Talk by a woman in Greece named Marcie Mayer. Mayer said that acorns are edible. It turns out they\u2019re not just edible but in fact a superfood, and one of our oldest and most abundant human foods. I was intrigued. Still, acorns might have been a passing fancy, except that around the same time, my bird-loving mother became fascinated with an entomologist named Doug Tallamy. Tallamy is from Pennsylvania, and his big message is that oak trees and some other keystone native plants \u2014 including other nut trees \u2014 have an outsize importance ecologically. A keystone species is one that\u2019s as important to its ecosystem as the keystone in a Roman arch; if you take it out, the whole system falls apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother couldn\u2019t stop telling me about the benefits of these trees for the birds. Tallamy has studied the relationships between plant species and insects (which form the base of our food chain), and he\u2019s found that 75% of the insect food required by birds and other wild animals is produced by just a few plant families. Maples, for instance, support 297 species of caterpillars, while yellowwoods (which grow in the southeastern United States) support none. Not all plants are created equal when it comes to food production and supporting wildlife and ecosystem health. Some plants do very little, while others are heavy lifters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oaks, to borrow Tallamy\u2019s words, are the top \u201clife support\u201d plants in most North American ecosystems. The genus supports more than 557 species of caterpillars \u2014 far more than any other group of trees. Many cultures historically have called oaks \u201cthe tree of life,\u201d and clearly, this is for good reason. So, while my mom got excited about the bird support side of things, I began thinking about what this meant for humans. I realized that if we grew our food on these keystone trees in the form of nuts \u2014 instead of the monocultures of corn and soybeans that make up so much of our food system today \u2014 it would have a positive impact on other species, rather than a negative one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I kept digging and learned that people all over the northern hemisphere have been eating nuts from keystone trees like oaks, chestnuts, and hazelnuts as staple foods for thousands of years \u2014 and that it\u2019s only recently that so many of us have forgotten this valuable foodway. I wondered if perhaps we\u2019d stopped because the oaks and other keystone trees didn\u2019t produce enough for our current populations, but I was quickly disabused of that notion. That same fall, I learned that a growing number of farmers are trying to bring keystone nut tree species back by establishing farms centered on them and a long list of other species native, or naturalized, to the oak ecosystems of North America: not just nuts but also apples, plums, cherries, peaches, grapes, asparagus, mushrooms, venison, quail, turkey, rabbits and more. One farmer called it \u201crestoration agriculture\u201d: a way of bringing the land back to health with <\/em>food production, instead of by removing human touch. Oak ecosystems, I began to realize, are prime human habitat. Perhaps we were more like the birds than I\u2019d imagined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The more I got to know the oak trees around my house on Cape Cod, though, the more I wondered about how I might help them. A year into my fascination with acorns a fellow author introduced me to Ron Reed \u2014 an Indigenous medicine man, biologist, father and member of the Karuk Tribe in present-day California. Reed\u2019s people have eaten acorns and tended oaks as a staple food crop since time immemorial, and as we got to know each other, I told him that I\u2019d noticed, as I began collecting and processing acorns, that some oaks were healthier and more productive than others. \u201cWhy?\u201d I asked, and Reed answered with a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Karuk culture, he said, every year his people perform what are called Piky\u00e1vish or World Renewal Ceremonies. The point is to create habitat for other species through ceremony. I wondered aloud: \u201cHow do you create habitat for an oak tree through ceremony?\u201d I\u2019d always seen oaks as natural and wild, two words that pretty much by definition exclude human care. \u201cFire,\u201d Reed answered. Every year during the World Renewal Ceremonies, Karuk people light prescribed or cultural fires to keep the land healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It turns out many oak ecosystems need fire to stay healthy, not just in California but also in many other places across North America. Because of fire suppression, oaks and other fire-loving nut trees are actually having trouble regenerating in various places. To understand more, I got trained in prescribed fire and started going on burns in oak lands near my home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As I did, Reed reminded me that this is our job as humans: to burn our woodlands to keep them healthy. Even as I absorbed this it kept surprising me, because I\u2019d always seen humans as a threat to the natural world \u2014 and here Reed was telling me that we<\/em> are vital to these keystone trees that in turn are vital to so many other species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Slowly what I came to understand, as I filtered what Reed was teaching me through my own background of Western science speak, is that not only are oaks a keystone species \u2014 a species so important that without them, whole ecosystems fall apart \u2014 but also, so are we<\/em>. The idea of humans as a keystone species was mind-bending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are different kinds of keystone species \u2014 mutualists like bees, keystone plants like oaks, predators like sharks \u2014 and there\u2019s also a category called ecosystem engineers. These are animals like beavers and elephants that uproot and trample and, in doing so, create habitat. This is the category humans fit into. Today we modify ecosystems mostly in negative ways: through greenhouse gas emissions, habitat destruction, fertilizer runoff, and so on. But historically, our largest role in most places around the world has been to manage and create ecosystems with fire. As fire historian Stephen Pyne has put it, we are \u201cthe fire animal.\u201d In North America, this means that humans and our fire and these keystone nut trees have been in relationship for thousands of years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The exciting news is we can do this again. We can be part of the living fabric of our places instead of trying to remove ourselves from them. We can tend these trees of life \u2014 and in doing so, create more life. <\/em>We can increase biodiversity. We can put carbon back in the ground; we can reverse dead zones. We can produce an abundance of nutritious, delicious food while generally acting as an ecological force for good. This is why I wrote my book, \u201cFeed Us with Trees,\u201d and this is why I believe that the future is nuts. There are all kinds of ways to get started, and many don\u2019t require owning a big swath of land. If you have an oak in your yard, you could start by leaving it there instead of cutting it down. Next you might make sure it has some space around it and that it is getting plenty of light, and then move on to learning what kinds of acorns it produces and how to process them into food. If fire calls, find out what\u2019s happening locally with prescribed burns. Sometimes groups need help with public advocacy; other times they\u2019re looking for more certified practitioners to help burn. Maybe you have a plot of open space or woodland you could diversify: think not just oaks but also chestnuts, hazelnuts, hickories, and black walnuts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And perhaps most importantly, see what happens when you begin thinking of yourself as an ecological force for good. It\u2019s amazing how much can shift when instead of asking how am I hurting this place<\/em>, we instead start wondering why does it need me<\/em>? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Elspeth\u00a0Hay<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is a public radio host and the author of the award-winning book \u201cFeed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food.\u201d Deeply immersed in her own local food system, Hay\u2019s work focuses on the people, places, and ideas that feed us. Find her online at\u00a0<\/em>elspethhay.com<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Acorns](\"https:\/\/www.mofga.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Acorns_MOFG-only-1024x683.jpg\")
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