Before the species was devastated by the chestnut blight, a fungal disease, it was one of the most important forest trees throughout its range. Hebard was even a model for a character in local writer Barbara Kingsolver’s best selling novel, Prodigal Summer: The American chestnut’s distinctive leaves, burs, and nuts. A Purdue University study shows that the growth rate, size and longevity of chestnuts let them store more carbon, and at a faster rate, than any other hardwood. One of the funders of that project is Duke Energy, which is interested in the chestnut’s potential to reclaim coal-mining land, but also in its promise for sequestering carbon dioxide. The American chestnut was one of the most important forest trees throughout its range and was considered the finest chestnut tree in the world. Overview Information American chestnut is a plant. Endangered. Researchers say they are strong performers, reaching three to seven feet, some flowering at an earlier age than normal. The key is a concept known as backcrossing. To develop resistance to the blight, young trees are inoculated with samples of the chestnut blight fungus. If there was an “Aha!” moment in bringing American chestnuts back this far from the brink, it came around 1980 when Charles Burnham, a corn geneticist, read of the shutdown of a decades-long, failed attempt by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to breed a resistant chestnut. And before they died, the little chestnuts exhibited about the same response to the blight, forming only slight cankers, as he would have expected of naturally resistant Chinese chestnuts. Then the chestnut blight came in and began to decimate this species in the early 1900s. Michigan. And next spring in Pennsylvania’s Westmoreland County, about 500 more of the blight-resistant chestnuts will be planted on a private, cutover forest plot, Steiner says. Before the early 1900s, the American chestnut was the predominant tree species in eastern forests. Free! History of the American Chestnut American chestnuts, giants that could grow up to 125 feet tall and 16 feet wide, once dominated the forests of Appalachia. Just as the chestnut blight appears here to stay, so does the movement to restore the chestnut to its place in the forest. A chestnut with a disease-resistant wheat gene has already been produced experimentally by researchers William Powell and Charles Maynard at the State University of New York’s Environmental Science and Forestry school in Syracuse. The trees grow best when American chestnut tree nuts are sown directly in the ground (with the flat side or sprout facing down, half an inch to an inch (1-2.5 cm.) American chestnut (Castanea dentata), whose native range is shown at left, is highly susceptible to the disease. A mature chestnut’s sweet, carroty-tasting nuts—as many as 6,000 from a single tree — were nearly a perfect food for both settlers and their livestock, as well as an array of wildlife from turkeys to bears. . But because of its size and rather coarse look, and the possible litter of the prickly nut husks, it might be best-suited to a woodlot or semi-wild area. And you get an award-winning magazine. It is also adaptable to different soils and climates, and established plants can withstand drought. The American chestnut was one of the largest trees in the forests of eastern North America. The majestic American chestnut tree was once common throughout the forests of eastern North America, providing sweet, meaty chestnuts for humans and wildlife. (Credit: American Chestnut Restoration Foundation/USDAFS). The process of tree breeding is not given to “eureka” breakthroughs. Powell says a $5.6-million project that includes sequencing all the genes in the chestnut is two years from completion. All evidence is that if the blight can be overcome, the chestnut can outcompete most any other hardwood to become part of the forest canopy. This article was published in the Winter 2010 issue of American Forests magazine. That’s the merest wisp of what Peattie described; “But we’re excited,” says Meghan Jordan of the American Chestnut Foundation (ACF), which supplied the trees. More than a thousand place names that contain the word chestnut remain today throughout the Appalachians, which were the heart of the species’ range. The extinction of the passenger pigeon, and the near extinction of bison — all around the same time — were in the same ballpark. Native range of the American chestnut tree (castanea dentata) The American chestnut tree reigned over 200 million acres of eastern woodlands from Maine to Florida, and from the Piedmont plateau in the Carolinas west to the Ohio Valley, until succumbing to a lethal fungus infestation, known as the chestnut blight, during the first half of the 20th century. Their profusion of bloom supported honeybees and other pollinators. It survives in the wild in the form of root systems and stump sprouts. The American chestnut was once a very common tree but is now extremely rare due to chestnut blight. Learn how to identify American chestnuts and send us a sample to support our research. A 94% American backcross hybrid, which characteristics of the American species, but the resistance of the Chinese. An American Chestnut Tree planted inside Bernheim’s Arboretum Prior to the 1900s, the American chestnut tree once dominated over 200 million acres of the eastern hardwood forest from Maine to Georgia, and west to the Ohio River Valley. It was most commonly found on hillsides and ridges. An Incredible Tree. They are high in fiber, vitamin C, protein, and carbohydrates, and low in fat. American chestnut. The American chestnut was once the king of the forest. Scientists think the problems lie partly in the large number of strains in which both blight and hypovirulence occur. . The American chestnut tree was extremely useful to those who lived in its range. The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) is a large, monoecious deciduous tree of the beech family native to eastern North America. Researchers have estimated that 1 out of every 4 trees in the Appalachian Mountains was an American chestnut. Known as “redwoods of the East,” chestnuts grew fast and big, and lived long, reaching 100 feet in height, with diameters exceeding 12 feet, and attaining an average age of two to three centuries. According to a historical publication, "many of the dry ridge tops of the central Appalachians were so thoroughly crowded with chestnut that, in early summer, when their canopies were filled with creamy-white flowers, the … Flowers are arranged in catkins with numerous tiny male flowers and a cluster of several female flowers at the base of some of the catkins. Furthermore, they believe that the progeny of these plants should all exhibit natural blight resistance. It is the only species of chestnut native to Canada. Between 1946 and 1963 it grew arrow-straight and tall like an American chestnut, reaching 76 feet before succumbing to blight in 1976. The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was one of the most common trees in the area. Chestnut hybrids, grown at the Hashawa Environmental Center in Carroll County, MD. Meanwhile, the original blight is able to remain dormant in dozens of non-chestnut tree species, from which it respreads by wind and by birds. Now, thanks to collaboration between the U.S. Forest Service, The American Chestnut Foundation and institutions like the University of Tennessee Tree Improvement Program, those blight-resistant trees are on the horizon, and scientists are developing silvicultural strategies to restore them to forests across their former range. With the state chapters, we’ll put millions of these trees throughout their range.” They will go, Hebard says, on available lands in national forests, on private property, and also to reforest abandoned strip-mined sites across Appalachia in a partnership with the federal Office of Surface Mining. Fred Hebard says he’s seen understory chestnuts only an inch in diameter that show 60 years of growth rings, followed by growth that approaches an inch a year after they get access to light. The American chestnut is native to southern and eastern parts of the United States, particularly along the Appalachian Mountains. That’s the merest wisp of what Peattie described; “But we’re excited,” says Meghan Jordan of the American Chestnut Foundation (ACF), which supplied the trees. By the 1950s destruction was complete. Far more numerous are chestnuts that sprout from the roots of felled forest giants, only to die in a decade or two from the deadly fungus that may never go away. ”. A project to spot chestnuts sprouting within sight of the Appalachian Trail has so far turned up more than 40,000, Burnworth says. (Credit: Melissa Boyle). The blight may evolve, too.”, But “restoration” chestnuts may not be the only tool in our arsenal before long. And because chestnuts blossom relatively late, their nut crop was never hit by the late frosts that often diminish the mast of oaks and hickories. American Chestnut is a vigorous fast-growing tree. Reaching over 30 metres tall and living up to 500 years, the chestnut was known as “the queen of eastern American forest trees.” So what happened to what was once also called the “redwood of the East?” American chestnut. He cites pollen profiles from North American lakes that show virtually all hemlocks simply vanished from the forests some 5,000 years ago — probably of a disease still unknown — and then reappeared throughout their range a few centuries later. At the University of Maryland’s Biotechnology Center in Shadyside, virologist Donald Nuss has been dissecting the American strains of hypovirulence, trying to understand why they don’t spread as easily in the wild here as they do in Europe. So far, neither the hypovirulence or his transgenic blight seem able to spread efficiently on their own in the wild, which would be essential for becoming effective across the landscape. American Forests Reflects on Florence Harding During 2019 International Women's DayPerhaps Florence Mabel. Scientific Name Scientifically, American chestnut is called Castanea Dentate Description American chestnut plant bears three nuts enfolded in each […] Once these crosses produced trees that were carrying chiefly the American chestnut genome — as much as 90 percent — they were ... state and national sites in the chestnut’s historical range. More Accounts and Images; ARS Germplasm Resources Information Network (CADE12) Flora of … Another hope lies with engineering a transgenic chestnut. Scientists believe that by crossing an American chestnut tree with its blight-resistant cousin, the Chinese chestnut, the tree will retain both its American traits (e.g., tall-growing) and the gene for blight resistance. “Oh, they all died.” “It was just a preliminary test, with no controls, not a scientific experiment,” he says. Status Endangered Chestnut wood was used to make furniture, shingles, siding, telephone poles, and fence posts. For example, a Green Mountain National Forest planting, ma… Special Concern. “I have no problem with what Fred is doing trying to produce a hybrid,” he says, “but a lot of people also just want to bring back the pure American tree.”. Silvicultural and reintroduction trials provide an opportunity to experiment with planting chestnuts on field and forested sites. *Are you enjoying this post? American chestnut was once the most important tree of the Eastern North American Hardwood Forest. But now comes the best hope in over a century for restoring the species that once comprised a quarter of all eastern hardwoods, with economic and environmental values unmatched by anything in today’s forest. Tax ID: 53-0196544, © 2021 American Forests. Researchers say they are strong performers, reaching three to seven feet, some flowering at an earlier age than normal. American Chestnut Habitat The graphic shows the range.... Eastern North America, from Mississippi to Maine mostly on the spine of mountainous uplands that slopes in an upwards, northeasterly direction from the Southland. These trees once reached the height of 30.5 … Some oak species (Quercusspp.) “Pretty good.”. “The American chestnut, considering it’s been around millions of years, can in the long term probably take care of itself as long as wild woodlands and rodents and jays exist to forage and spread the nuts.” Paillet wonders whether it’s possible for the chestnut to someday be seen as virtually “invasive;” a problem, he writes, “I would gladly live with.”, — Tom Horton writes from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Its nuts were consumed by animals and people alike, and it was widely used as timber. The goal has been to develop a blight-resistant strain of the tree and, over time, reintroduce it to its natural range. Wetland Status. It was a magnificent tree used for lumber and for food. Range. Scientists have found naturally occurring viruses in the forest that are, in effect, a blight of the chestnut blight, infecting it and weakening its destructive power. This species once was a dominant … The chestnut was a common species in the deciduous forests of the upland Appalachian region, which stretches from Maine to northern Mississippi and includes southern New York. But it’s clear this is more than a job to him. Interactive Koppen Climate Classification Map for the United States; Burnworth explains that American chestnuts have an extraordinary ability to “release,” or spurt toward the light when surrounding canopy trees die. He hit them hard with a massive dose, much more severe than they’d have received in nature, he says. Plans have already been laid to take the Meadowview program through another few generations of crossing to get an even better chestnut 20 years hence. Caring for American Chestnut Trees. Native range of the American chestnut tree (castanea dentata). At the forefront of this effort is The American Chestnut Foundation, which has chapters in 16 eastern states and a major research farm in Meadowview, Virginia. If trees could talk...a region's history as told by its ancient trees. His funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, which is interested in how viruses work; the chestnut hypovirulence is one of the easiest ways to study this, Nuss says. The American Chestnut Foundation is working to restore the chestnut to its natural range. Burnham had always assumed that program, which crossed thousands of American and Chinese trees since the 1930s, would eventually succeed. Today as we prowl the forests, its hard to think in the past tense and visualize that Castanea dentata, the American Nuss has cloned the hypovirulence and inserted it into a transgenic chestnut blight whose effects on trees are far less severe. Reading the USDA’s published results, Burnham was shocked to realize that its scientists, including future Green Revolution Nobelist Norman Borlaug, had ignored a basic tenet of breeding resistance into crops. The American Chestnut was once the giant of the Appalachian forest canopy. Then breeders wait years for the offspring to grow, inoculate them with blight, and select as few as one out of every 150 trees that show the best resistance and most American-like growth habit. Only hundreds of latest-generation nuts have been available to date, but this fall’s harvest was 13,000, and the numbers will grow geometrically. Even the Boy Scouts pitched in to try and save the chestnuts, scouring forests for blighted trees as part of a multi-state effort to create an infection-free zone. “This means that our goal after 25 years has moved from breeding a chestnut that can survive to working on landscape-level restoration.”. In Carroll County, Maryland, in partnership with the American Chestnut Foundation and American Forests, more than 18,000 school children each year participate in a science curriculum built around experimental chestnut orchards. Burnham and other scientists in 1983 founded the private, nonprofit American Chestnut Foundation to carry out a scientific program of backcross breeding. (Credit: Vicky Sawyer). Nor has the chestnut itself ever really gone away, notes Essie Burnworth, head of the ACF’s Maryland chapter: “There are millions of them around, sprouting from old stumps, sitting as seedlings in the forest understory, just waiting for light to grow.”. ACCF geneticists calculated that perhaps 10% (estimates range from 5% to 20%) of the plants produced in this manner will exhibit blight resistance at least as favorable as the parent trees. The loss of the chestnut was an ecological calamity with few equals. deep) as soon as the soil is workable. He understood that on his slow march toward his heavenly reward, he would spend as many years as possible growing and backcrossing the American with the Chinese chestnut . “And?” 1220 L Street, NW, Suite 750Washington, DC 20005, Phone: 202.737.1944 Remnant root systems are resilient and continue to send up new shoots that eventually succumb to the blight. Their native range encompasses most of the Appalachian mountain range, as far north as southern Maine and south as far as Alabama. With this latest hybrid, unofficially dubbed the “Restoration” chestnut, breeders feel they have a tree with enough of the Chinese chestnut’s natural blight resistance to have a shot at surviving; but also a tree that is virtually indistinguishable in form, growth rate, and wood quality from a pure American chestnut. Planting will continue in national forests. Silvicultural trials allow us to learn how chestnut grows under different forest management scenarios. It has elongate leaves tapered at both ends and large teeth along the margins. Griffin, an emeritus professor of plant pathology, has been working since 1973 grafting tissue from old survivors (and younger ones that have made it to about 15 inches in diameter) onto American chestnut rootstock, crossing these to one another. The American Chestnut (Castanea dentata) is a large, deciduous tree of the beech family native to eastern North America. A pure Chinese chestnut, resistant to the blight. Today, more than 100 years after a blight forced it into extinction, scientists are resurrecting this once-great tree. Griffin has one tree, grafted in the early 1980s, that is now 24 inches in diameter and close to 70 feet tall. While the Chestnut Foundation’s new, resistant trees are the first soldiers to be deployed against the blight, other ongoing programs could soon bear fruit: a chestnut genetically engineered for blight resistance; genetically altered strains of the blight fungus itself that weaken it; and, farther from success, breeding a pure native with resistance by crossing old survivor chestnuts to one another. By 1989 the American Chestnut Foundation had secured farmland to begin its research and breeding program at the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley in the small town of Meadowview, Virginia. Most American chestnuts today are killed by the chestnut blight by the time they reach 15 feet in height. These “redwoods of the East,” as they were sometimes called, made up between one quarter and one half … There are also ongoing efforts to develop trees that are resistant to the disease. American chestnut. It is estimated that between 3 and 4 billion American chestnut trees were destroyed in the first half of the 20… (Credit: American Chestnut Restoration Foundation/USDAFS). By Tom Horton, Healthy American chestnuts in Lesesne State Park. Chinese chestnut (C. mollissima) is resistant; a small canker can occur. Their bold-grained, blondish wood was strong, easily worked, and extremely rot-resistant, used in everything from barn timbers to pianos, split-rail fences to fine furniture (in which it was often veneered with more fashionable woods like mahogany). (Credit: American Chestnut Foundation), “He was haunted by the ghosts of these old chestnuts, by the great emptiness their extinction had left in the world. Fax: 202.737.2457 The little trees represent the sixth generation of a breeding program begun by the 6,000-member ACF in 1989. Map Legend. Consider supporting American Forests to help us continue our work to restore, and grow healthy and resilient forests and city canopies all over the country! Among his concerns is whether we fully understand all the mechanisms chestnuts employ to resist the blight; also “Will the Chinese chestnut’s resistance, even if we put it all into an American tree, be enough? Backcrossing was how the King Ranch bred its famed Santa Gertrudis cattle to produce excellent meat while surviving the harsh south-Texas environment. “Meanwhile,” he says, “we’re going to plant. “By the time a white oak acorn has made a baseball bat, the chestnut stump has made a railroad tie,” one advocate boasted. When you decide to start planting American chestnut trees, it’s important to begin early in the spring. However, the species was devastated by chestnut blight, a fungal disease that came from introduced chestnut trees from East Asia. There are now only 100 or so that remain. 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