Based on an interspecific comparison, Fernández-Martinez et al. found that masting is stronger in populations growing under conditions of nutrient scarcity, a relationship potentially providing a mechanistic link to resource-budget models of mast fruiting. Using comparisons among individual Quercus lobata, a common California masting oak species, we tested whether access to ground water, foliar nitrogen (N), and foliar phosphorus (P) correlate with greater inter-annual acorn crop variability, increased synchrony of acorn production with other trees in the population, and more negative lag-1 autocorrelations with acorn production the prior year—metrics indicative of masting-like behavior. Our analyses failed to support the nutrient scarcity hypothesis. Three of the significant correlations between masting metrics and resources were in the opposite direction predicted by the hypothesis—trees with greater foliar N showed greater variability and synchrony in acorn production—while the other two (more water-stressed trees exhibited larger coefficients of variation [CV] in interannual acorn production) were apparently due to the inverse relationship between CV and mean overall productivity. More studies at different geographic and taxonomic scales and of other potentially important nutrients are needed to understand the relationship between masting and resources.