WOUNDED AMERICAN

A hundred years ago the hardwood forests of the American Northeast and Midwest United States were dominated by enormous American chestnut trees. Dozens of bird and mammal species feasted upon the rich nutrients of the chestnuts, just as our ancestors celebrated the pleasures of “chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”

Because chestnut trees bear a consistent crop year in and year out, they were a far more dependable food source than many other trees. Most other tree species that yield nuts or acorns bear heavily only in alternate years.

Often towering over a hundred feet, the American chestnut was a majestic and beautiful shade tree, equally prized for its excellent timber. Rapid and straight growth, even grain, and excellent resistance to rot, made chestnut wood versatile and valuable. It was used for paneling and furniture, shingles, fence posts, mine timbers, railroad ties and telegraph poles.

But in 1895 a load of imported Asian chestnut seedlings for the New York Botanical Garden brought the chestnut blight fungus to America’s shores. Unlike its oriental relative, which tolerates the fungus that is native to its home range, the previously unexposed American chestnut was devastated by the infection. Entering the tree through injuries in the outer bark, the fungus would spread into the xylem and phloem layers, which carry nutrients from leaves to roots and back.

In less than 40 years, the American chestnut was nearly extinct throughout its once vast range. Only a few isolated mature trees remain. The forlorn stumps of once majestic specimens can still be found in scattered areas, sprouting tiny, pathetic shoots that grow briefly, until they too succumb to the blight.

But scientists at Purdue and other American universities have been developing blight resistant hybrids by crossing the few surviving American chestnuts with their oriental cousins. Once they have obtained highly resistant strains, they then work to create trees that are genetically 94 percent American and 6 percent Asian hybrids. Others are at work attempting to develop a method for inoculating the American chestnut from the blight, or seeking out possibly resistant strains surviving in isolated pockets. Finally, there is an effort to develop transgenic chestnut trees by implanting the genes for blight resistance from Asian varieties into the American chestnut.

If any of these alternatives prove auspicious, horticulturists will eventually begin to release a limited number of blight-resistant chestnut seeds and bare root trees to the public. If these pioneers prove successful, significant plantings would follow over the ensuing decade.

With good fortune, the noble American chestnut will someday once again grace our nation’s landscape, feeding small animals, gracing our parks, perhaps even roasting in hearths from Kansas to Maine.

I’m prompted to relate this tale by a review, appearing in the American Scientist, of Susan Freinkel’s American Chestnut: The Life, Death and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree. I have yet to read the book, and in fact, it’s not yet in the library. But you can bet that it soon will be, and I hope to be the first to check it out.

In the meantime, if you want to learn more about trees and forests, or how you can plant trees that feed wildlife and make our community a more beautiful and friendly place, just drop by ask your Haysville Community librarian for help. For further information right now, try the American Chestnut Foundation’s Restoring the American Chestnut Tree or the website for the American Chestnut Cooperators’ Foundation at Virginia Tech, or Bruce Carley’s New Hope for the American Chestnut.