Acorn
fruit/nut of the oak tree
The acorn is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera Quercus, Notholithocarpus and Lithocarpus, in the family Fagaceae); alternatively known as glans. It usually contains a seedling surrounded by two cotyledons (seedling leaves), enclosed in a tough shell known as the pericarp, and borne in a cup-shaped cupule. Acorns take between 5 and 24 months (depending on the species) to mature; see the list of Quercus species for details of oak classification, in which acorn morphology and phenology are important factors.
Etymology
The word acorn (earlier akerne, and acharn) is related to the Gothic name akran, which had the sense of "fruit of the unenclosed land". The word was applied to the most important forest produce, that of the oak. Chaucer spoke of "achornes of okes" in the 14th century. By degrees, popular etymology connected the word both with "corn" and "oak-horn", and the spelling changed accordingly. The current spelling (emerged c. 15th–16th century) derives from association with ac (Old English: "oak") + corn. The Latin glans as found in many literature regarding it originally applies to any nut is the root of several Romance words for the acorn (the French gland, Catalan gla, Italian ghianda) cognate to Greek βάλανος, which also extends to the vascular penile tip from similarity in shape.
Ecology
Acorns play an important role in forest ecology when oaks are plentiful or dominant in the landscape.
The public source identifies “Acorn” as fruit/nut of the oak tree. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Acorn, fruit and tree.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3914781. The Library of Congress control number is sh85000572. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Acorn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.