Years ago the American Chestnut was the dominant tree in much of the Eastern USA. But a fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica) was accidentally introduced way back in 1904. Brought over on the roots of Chinese Chestnut trees. In less than 50 years virtually all of the mature American Chestnut trees had died or had been cut to salvage some wood before they were killed by the blight.
Few people today realize what we lost back then. Today in the East pine trees are the money tree for timber companies. But in the past the American Chestnut tree was THE most valuable tree in the forest for a whole host of reasons. You have heard the phrase Jack of all trades. Well the American Chestnut was the King of all trade.
But it has long since vanished from our woods and our minds. Fortunately these fallen trees have kept sprouting back from root stock of the fallen giants long enough for modern science to devise a way to bring them back from certain extinction.
Over the last few decades there has been a large effort by the The American Chestnut Foundation to breed, via a novel backcross method blight resistant trees. What they basically have been doing is crossing a Chinese Chestnut with one of our trees. They then take the seed from these trees that have resistance and again cross with another American Chestnut. Each time this is done the seedlings are a larger and larger percent American Chestnut but are carefully selected so that only plants are kept that still have blight resistance. Ultimately you end up with an American Chestnut that only has 4 percent chinese chestnut genes and is indistiguishable from a pure American Chestnut tree.
Well their years of hard work is finally coming to fruition. They have announce that first trial restorations using 500 saplings grown from completely blight-resistant nuts will begin at the end of 2009 in three national forests in the southern United States.
Each year more and more nuts will be produced and restoration if all goes well should proceed and an increasing rate over the coming years and decades. It will of course take many years well past any of our lifetimes before the tree is as wide spread as it use to be but the tree is back. I for one can't wait till they have enough nuts for the general public to be able to purchase some for our own private use. I won't see it grow to gigantic size but hopefully I will be around long enough to taste the delicious nuts that we sing about each Christmas.
