Acorn knowledge is a sign of your intelligence, apparently.

Today at work my co-worker Todd was planning activities for the fall after school program for elementary students.  One of the activities requires the use of acorns.  As he was looking through the supplies the question was brought up:  “Where do you buy acorns anyway?”  My common response to similar questions is:  “GOOGLE it!”  …which we did.  And so began the wild goose chase!  (Do geese eat acorns?)

We found an article bawling you out if you didn’t know what tree an acorn came from. Do you know?  If not, the author of this article found it extremely disturbing and said that it just pointed out how not knowing shows a serious lack of education in most of us…the article states:

Not knowing where acorns come from is symptomatic of something very perplexing. A culture which is that ignorant is going to be unaware of a great many more facts about nature and that could lead to environmental suicide. A culture that doesn’t know where acorns come from obviously doesn’t know much about trees at all, and so will go heedlessly on destroying forests until it destroys the ecosystems of about half the earth.

If you don’t know where acorns come from, you won’t know that acorn flour was once a staple food of native Americans, especially in California, and could be a staple food again. If you don’t know where acorns come from, do you know where oil and coal come from? Do you know where a healthy environment comes from? Do you know, for instance, that a mature shade tree gives off 60 cu. ft. of pure oxygen every day?

Do you know where most of the building material for houses comes from? Where good furniture and tool handles come from? Where most fruit and edible nuts come from? Where rubber comes from? Where coconut, varnishes, nutmeg and turpentine come from? Where millions of acres of fertile land came from? Where hundreds of species of wild animals come from, some of which were probably our evolutionary ancestors? Where the life-saving fuel for many millions of people comes from?

Will a society that doesn’t know where acorns come from really know where humans come from?

Why do I feel like I’m being yelled at?

The hunt continued…we checked Hobby Lobby and Michaels – they have acorns, but they are attached to seasonal crafty little wreaths and such, not sold separately and it would take a lot of wreaths to pull off enough acorns for what we needed them for.

Another GOOGLE search with a rephrasing of the question yielded some very helpful options – check a feed store.  We looked up feed stores, they laughed and then grew silent and perplexed when we asked, then where should we call?  They meekly suggested Whole Foods Stores or Tree Nurseries…we looked up these options, called Whole Foods, nope, called a Nursery and they said you have to call a “tree growing nursery”. Oh, I said, as if I even knew the difference.

Finally in Longmont we found a “tree growing nursery”  with staff who laughed at first, then grew silent but then jovially said, “Wait, Mike’s writing something down.”  Um, I’m on the phone and I can’t see…it’s quiet.  Then the phone answerer said, “Try Mistletoe Seeds.”  “Great,” I said, “where in Colorado are they?”  “They aren’t, they’re in California.”

Now it was my turn to be silent, perplexed.  This craft is gonna cost a lot of money if I have to fly to California to buy acorns!  But I’ll be happy to volunteer!   I said, “May I have their number?”  To which they replied, oh, we don’t have it – GOOGLE it!  Great, here we go again.  After sifting through a variety of gardening verbage…[what's a CYROSTACHYS or a SEAFORTHIA anyway? I'm not that into Botony]…I hit the jackpot, er, acornpot.  Mistletoe-Carter Wholesale Seeds Company  in Goleta, California and guess what, they didn’t laugh and they may even have acorns.  After realizing we didn’t need them to plant to grow Oak Trees (see I am intelligent!) but needed them for a craft, Mistletoe Staff Member Cindy said she’d check with her manager because they may have hundreds of acorns that have passed their prime for growing anything and would just be thrown away anyway…and maybe…if we pay for shipping, we could have them! 

How heavy are hundreds of acorns?

Maybe we should GOOGLE another craft!