ok, so here's a guess, and not a very well educated one at that. we've had a couple of hard winters recently, with cold snaps fairly late into spring - these surely must slow down the development of keys in the first place. so if we assume that the keys are late getting started then maybe they've not reached the right stage of development when the time to drop them comes around (influenced i would guess by either falling temperatures or shorter days) so the tree ends up hanging on to them. another hard winter follows and the keys are very effectively killed off where they hang, dead keys can obviously no longer reach the stage of development neccesary for them to fall naturally so they end up hanging there until time takes it's course and the keys are knocked from the tree by the elements.
all speculation based upon many different poorly understood subjects so please don't quote me.
i think that asking nature to follow a plan may well be asking for a little too much. someone on here has the signature line of "nature has no rules, only habits" (sorry if i've mis-quoted) credited to hakim bey, it's one of the many signature lines on here that would appear to contain not a little wisdom.
stuart
Just a thought, can you eat them the same as nuts that have dried?
