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The Chestnut Group was inspired and formed by Col. Hayward Shepherd beginning in 2004. He had seen the giant chestnuts during his boyhood around Lynchburg, Virginia, and later realized the importance of the loss of this magnificent tree. He saw that there may be a way to assist in work toward restoring the tree, developing a hybrid, or in other ways participating in creating a new (old) resource for the people of Appalachia and an economic resource for others. He began correspondence with Dr. Lee Klinger San Anselmo, California, who was working with oak wilt disease in the western US and with Mr. Allen H. Loyd who had personal interests in the chestnut and was a member of organizations and volunteered in several "service projects" working for chestnut study and reintroductions. Giles has studied chestnuts as a game biologist in Virginia in the late 1950s and with Seth Diamond, an excellent former student (deceased) published an article in honor of Seth and his work on chestnut mast (nuts for game species) production.
The profit-oriented objective of the group is:
A region-wide system of chestnut orchards providing employment, food, and an alternative commercial activity within the diverse work of Rural System
To achieve that, the Group now studies and works toward:
Will the blight end the chestnut?
The farmers rather guess not.
It keeps smoldering at the roots
And sending up new shoots
Till another parasite
Shall come to end the blight.
by Robert Frost (early 30's)
Background Notes
Scientific name of the American chestnut: Castanea dentata, (Marsh) Bork.
Name of the European chestnut: Castanea sativa
Name of the fungus that produces the symptomatic canker, Endothia parasitica (There are 80 types)
Endothia parasitica procreates sexually and asexually. Sick strains do not produce spores. Weakened asexually reproducing strains are carried by insects, water, and birds. Shrub attraction to birds carrying the pathogen seems slight; attraction to large adult trees very great.
There appear to be no blight-resistant American chestnut trees.
Chestnut trees do not pollenate themselves.
Strategies seem to be to increase resistance by breeding programs, improve the bark and resistance to attack, find a diagnostic for resistance so breeding programs can select for desirable stock early.
Giles suggested planting patterns such as suggested for black walnuts to maximize solar radiation received and minimize moisture and other stress.
Diamond reported that cankers can be "cured" by filling them with mud and making a mud pack of local earth in and over the canker. Organisms in the earth seem to attack the parasites.
Hartline (1980) reported researchers optimistic that a virus-like disease of the blight-causing fungus of chestnuts may eventually spell salvation for the American chestnut. Success experienced in Europe has not been reproduced in the US.
The cure may not be possible. The chestnut is very vulnerable to the fungus. Existing trees in the US are saplings and can be killed in a season. Apparently the fungus has diversified since entering the country in late 1890's on a shipment of oriental chestnut tree lumber.
Cured cankers may offer a source of virus that attach the fungus. The fungus seems susceptible to many parasitic viruses.
The first report of the disease in the US was in New York, 1904. By 1950 9 million acres of chestnut were dead or dying.
The blight hit Michigan trees later that those in other areas. In 1980 Lawrence Brewer, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, observed that there were a few stands of large trees that had never been infected. Others have notes some trees healing naturally.
Tannin extracted from bark and wood was used for tanning leather. The tree was important for wood, , for fences (the split-rail fence) ,wildlife livestock, and people.
In 1982 Anagnostakis reported limited success using a variety of combinations of hypovirulent virus strains placed in several plugged holes near each canker.
May the force be with this new chestnut
Extracts from an article By Joy Franklin Citizens Times
published: July 3, 2005 6:00 am
a blight-resistant American chestnut would be planted in the Cradle of Forestry,...Anyone who’s spent much time hiking in Pisgah and Nantahala national forests or any large tract of forested land in the Southern Appalachians has come upon chestnut stumps, sometimes with doomed sprouts still looking green and healthy.
... I was directed to Phil Pritchard, director of development and special projects for the American Chestnut Foundation, who is based in the foundation’s Asheville office. The tree was planted during a visit by an international delegation of forest management leaders. The group, from France, Germany, Switzerland and the United States, was in Asheville last week to discuss goals and challenges in sustainable forest management.
.. the tree planted Wednesday is only partially blight-resistant, but it is a harbinger of the real thing.
The American Chestnut Foundation was established in 1983 with the goal of restoring the American chestnut to its native range in the woodlands of the eastern United States. American chestnuts once dominated Appalachian forests, making up as much as a quarter of the hardwoods.
They grew to be huge trees, more than five feet in diameter. The creamy white blossoms spread across the top of their dense canopy sometimes made mountaintops look snow covered in summer.
Besides being beautiful, chestnuts provided forage for birds, bears, squirrels, deer and other native wildlife that depended on the plentiful nuts. They provided sustenance for humans too.
Appalachian families gathered the nuts to eat in winter, to fatten livestock, and to sell. They were shipped by the railroad-car full to northern cities where street vendors roasted and sold them.
The tree was also highly valued for its timber. It grew straight and tall, often without branches for up to 50 feet. It was as resistant to rot as redwood and was used for everything from telegraph poles and railroad ties to paneling and musical instruments.
Then, an Asian fungus, to which native trees had no resistance, began killing American chestnuts. The fungus, brought in on an imported tree, was discovered in New York in 1904.
By the 1950s, almost all of the chestnut trees from Maine to Florida were dead, though their root systems continue valiantly to send out sprouts which survive for two or three years before the fungus attacks and kills them.
The chestnut tree was so central to Appalachian forest ecosystems, its loss is considered by some measures to be among the most devastating environmental disasters to occur in the Western Hemisphere since the last ice age.
The American Chestnut Foundation established the Wagner Research Farm in Meadowview, Va., in 1989 to execute a backcross breeding program developed by two of the nonprofit’s founding scientists. The goal was to breed blight resistance from the Chinese chestnut into the American chestnut while retaining the American chestnut’s characteristics.
The trees that result will be 95-99 percent American chestnut genetically ...American in character ... except for the blight-resistant gene from the Chinese trees
By 2007-2008, fully blight-resistant seedlings will be ready to plant in major field trials on Forest Service land
..another decade or more to see if, in fact, we’ve got what we think we have
...the foundation will continue breeding with new genetic stock from throughout the tree’s range so the resistant trees will come as close as possible to the genetic diversity that originally existed.
ON THE WEB: www.acf.org Readers may contact Franklin at 828-232-5895 or by e-mail at Jfranklin@CITIZEN-TIMES.com
References
Diamond, S. J., R. H. Giles, R. L. Kirkpatrick, and G. J. Griffin. 2000. Hard mast production before and after the chestnut blight. Southern J. Applied For. 24(4) 196-201
Hartline, B.K. 1980. Fighting the spreading chestnut blight. Science 209(22): 892-893.
Anagnostakis, S.L. 1982. Biological control of chestnut blight. Science 215 : 466-471
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