Mast (botany)

Mast is the "fruit of forest trees like acorns and other nuts". It is also defined as "the fruit of trees such as beech, and other forms of Fagaceae". Alternatively, it can also refer to "a heap of nuts". The term "mast" comes from the old English word "mæst", meaning the nuts of forest trees that have accumulated on the ground, especially those used as food for fattening domestic pigs.

More generally, mast is considered the edible vegetative or reproductive part produced by woody species of plants, i.e. trees and shrubs, that wildlife species and some domestic animals consume. It comes in two forms.

Tree species such as oak, hickory, and beech produce a hard mast—acorns, hickory nuts, and beechnuts. It has been traditional to turn pigs loose into forests to fatten on this form of mast. Also branch tips of the latest year's growth are eaten by some wildlife, such as deer.

Other tree and shrub species produce a soft mast—leaf buds, catkins, true berries, drupes, and rose hips.

A mast year is a year in which much more mast than usual is produced. The phrase originally applied solely to trees, like oak trees, that produce fruit useful for feeding farm animals.

Mast seeding or masting is a mass-seeding phenomenon exhibited by some species of plants, which can be defined as "synchronous production of seed at long intervals by a population of plants". Masting, in the strict sense of the term, occurs only in monocarpic (or semelparous) species, whose members reproduce only once during their lifetime, then die.

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