Why?
Well, the
American chestnut was once called “the redwood of the East,” since it could
grow up to 70 feet tall, it grew straight, and the wood resisted rot and
mildew. In fact, as you can see in the video below, one tree could provide
enough wood to build a barn and a house.
And they
were all over Appalachia,
accounting for perhaps 25% of the forest canopy. Here, take a look:
That’s a
serious tree, right? Unfortunately, the tree is extinct, though there are
millions of specimens growing from Georgia to Maine.
How can
that be?
In 1904,
the legend goes, a botanist introduced the Chinese Chestnut
into the New York Botanical Gardens, and those tree were infected with a fungal
blight, to which the Chinese chestnut had resistance. But the American
chestnut? It had none, and soon, almost all trees were afflicted with a canker
that grew around the tree, killing off anything above. The tree, however, could
still sprout, but those sprouts too would be infected. So what was once a
majestic tree now exists as a shrub. If lucky, the tree can make it up to 25
feet or so before succumbing—a far cry from the 100 feet of the trees before
the fungus arrived.
Rapidly,
the trees fell ill and died; it’s a rare person who may have seen one. But
here’s the good news: there are two groups taking two separate paths working to
save the tree. The first group is the American Chestnut Foundation, located in Asheville, North Carolina,
which started out cross-breeding American chestnuts with Chinese chestnuts.
Then, they bred up to six generations of trees exclusively with the American
chestnut; now they have achieved trees that are 94% American. And they’ve
planted 14,000 on 30 acres of rural Pennsylvania. By the way, one of the cool
benefits of sending 300 bucks to the American Chestnut Foundation—besides being
able to brag to your friends that you’re a “chestnut leaf annual sponsor”—is
that you might (if they’re available) get four chestnut seeds of your own to
plant. However, first you have to sign an agreement; here’s a summary from the Foundation’s website:
The
Germplasm Agreement is a standard agreement used by many universities when
someone is testing plantings such as TACF’s Restoration Chestnuts. In fact, the
agreement is very similar to agreements used by the University of Wisconsin,
Iowa State University and several other universities that are involved in
agricultural and forestry research.
This
agreement in no way dictates any control over your property or does the
agreement keep you from eventually harvesting your trees for lumber.Since these
trees are unproven, it is critical that test plantings or the subsequent seeds
produced by your trees not be planted without TACF knowing the location of the
plantings. Otherwise we can’t evaluate the progress of the plantings.
The other group working on the chestnut is at State
University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and
they’ve chosen another strategy: inserting a blight-resistance gene (from
wheat, of all things) into the American chestnut. And they, too, seem posed for
success. So as The New York Times
points out, it seems to be a matter of time. We’ll
know, probably in ten years or so.
Can’t wait?
Well, anybody near La Crosse, Wisconsin should consider contacting the
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, and begging, pleading,
doing-whatever-you-can to see what was, at least in 2003, the largest strand of
American chestnuts in the world. Located in the West Salem area, well, here’s that the DNR had to say:
There are
thousands of mammoth chestnut trees standing on 60 acres of private forestland
in La Crosse County. These trees comprise the largest remaining stand of
American chestnut in the world.
Sadly, the
Wisconsin chestnuts were hit by the blight, despite being quite far out of the
natural habitat (they were brought from the east by Martin Hicks, an early
settler), but the grove is being monitored by scientists from UW-La Crosse,
Michigan State, and West Virginia University. So though the strand has been
reduced, there’s hope for a comeback.
Dr. William MacDonald, of West Virginia University, said this about the chestnut blight: it was "the single greatest
catastrophe known in recorded North American forest history."
Today’s
good news?
In a
decade, it might be over!
P.S.
Disinclined to spend three hundred dollars on four nuts? Well, unbelievably,
you can plant 8 to 12 in seedlings by ordering from a nursery
in Wisconsin. Not this
year—I called and learned that they were out of stock. But next year, yes. When
I asked how the nursery had obtained the seedlings, the response was a bit
vague. Best of all is the price: $8.49, which goes down to 2.99 if you order
250 saplings. Where do these saplings come from? The man at the nursery
wouldn’t say, but here’s what the website said:
These
seedlings are grown from chestnuts collected from a large orchard of very old
American Chestnut trees which have never displayed symptoms of the blight even
though the blight has affected all the other trees in the region. It is
uncommon to see this happen and leads us to believe that the parents may have
some natural built in blight resistance.
Here’s the
link…
