Saving The American Chestnut Tree

 

As a boy growing up in Appalachia, I heard many stories about the blight which killed nearly all the American Chestnut trees, literally wiping them out over most of the United States.  Chestnut lumber was highly valued and, during my childhood, was commonly found in houses, barns, and outbuildings all over Eastern Kentucky where I grew up.  Now nearly all that chestnut lumber has disappeared due to either rot, fires, and floods or the destruction of older buildings because their owners did not like the looks or they did not know the value of the lumber. What little can be found is still highly valued all across the Appalachian region for use in interior decorating settings in homes, businesses, and offices.  

Luckily, there is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation, propagation, and proliferation of the American Chestnut tree.  That organization is called The American Chestnut Foundation and can be found at this link.  The organization cites ten reasons for saving the American Chestnut: 

1.  it will restore America's forests and improve biodiversity; 
2. it will restore what is sometimes referred to as the "cradle to grave tree"   for its variety of uses, it was an important food source and cash crop for the people of Appalachia and was also commonly known as a food source for free ranging livestock, especially hogs, in the days before livestock laws became common and required all livestock to be kept in fenced areas. 
3.  it is also an excellent wildlife food source for everything ranging from large birds to deer, wild hogs, and bear.
4. Its fast growth and tolerance of rocky, acidic, and poor soils, makes it perfect for returning degraded landscapes to fruitful condition, including those left by strip mining, to diverse and healthy forests
5. restoring the American Chestnut will provide a better understanding of saving other such endangered trees and protecting all of America's forests.
6. the American Chestnut produces excellent, durable, decorative lumber of a very high quality.
7. the fruit of the American Chestnut has a better, sweeter flavor than the Chinese Chestnut or other varities and is more useful in cooking.
8. the American Chestnut makes an excellent tree for shade and landscaping purposes.
9. the wood is also an excellent product for use in high quality production of furniture and decorative objects.
10. restoring the American Chestnut will achieve final success against one of the worst ecological disasters on the American continent.      
    

 

Numerous media outlets have addressed the issue of saving the American Chestnut ranging from the Cincinnati Magazine to the New York Times to Mother Earth News.     In April 2020, the New York Times Magazine published and article about the possibility of using genetic engineering to save the American Chestnut as did  Colleen J. Muvihill, a microbiologist at the University of Texas at Austin.   But there have been only a very small number of living, resistant American Chestnut trees found in America and the genetic engineering necessary to propagate them and save blight resistant progeny has several inherent problems which numerous scientists are working to solve.  Whatever is done over the next decades to save this American giant, should be performed with both haste and caution.  That is to say that we must work to save the tree while we still have a few healthy living specimens with which to work and yet scientists must not rush headlong into the project without due regard for potential red flags which arise along the way regarding the possibility of breeding flaws into the final products which could range from susceptibility to other diseases, sterility, and even some that we cannot foresee at this  time.  But the possibility of achieving a day when the American Chestnut tree is once again abundant nation wide is well worth the effort and expense.  

Syracuse University is working on a project involving genetic engineering to save the tree.  Because their trees are genetically modified organisms (GMO's) the university is required to guarantee that they do not release pollen into the wild and must bag every flower on every tree, build deer proof fences, and install aluminum mesh to prevent squirrels from carrying pollen away to other sites.  There is a very realistic hope that they will soon be able to propagate their variety of American Chestnut in wild forests with government approval.  Let's all hope for that day to come.  I eagerly look forward to smelling a roasting American Chestnut on a hearth at Christmas time.  I hope you do too.  

Since I posted this blog yesterday on several Facebook groups, a large number of people who obviously have Chinese Chestnut trees on their property have been commenting about how certain they are that theirs are American Chestnut trees.  So I am posting links here to a couple of web sites which have very good descriptions of the differences between the American Chestnut tree and the Chinese Chestnut.  Before you go off the deep end believing you have an American Chestnut treee check both the websites and your tree so you know the difference.  

This is the link to the American Chestnut Foundation website's page with photos and clear cut descriptions of the differences between the two trees.  

This is the link to the Virginia Tech University website's page with equally accurate descriptions and photos of the differences between the two trees.