The American Chestnut

The American Chestnut is a treasure that may be on the rebound. The forests of today look very different than those that our forefathers saw when they first arrived in North America. They saw millions of towering Chestnut trees that fed the animals of the forest and provided a substantial amount of lumber to build our new nation. In fact, it could produce lumber up to 50% faster than an oak. This growth rate caused it to store great quantities of CO2 which few other trees can match. In this day and time we need the American Chestnut and researchers are trying to find a way to turn back the clock on the magnification tree.
In 1904 a few trees of Asian origin were planted in New York City. One of these trees just happened to be infected with a bark shattering fungus known as Chestnut Blight. This blight girdles the trees causing them to die. Once this blight was here it went on to destroy nearly 4 billion trees across the United States. A massive, useful and elegant tree was no more.
But wait....for the past 25 years scientist have been working to revive this giant of the forest. Researcher Charles Burnham discovered that he could do series of backcross breeding with the Chinese Chestnut (which is resistant to Chestnut Blight) to breed this resistance into the American Chestnut. The use of backcross breeding allows the trees to remain nearly 93% American Chestnut with only the disease resistance of the Chinese Chestnut. This is done by crossing hybrid trees with purely American Chestnut trees repeatedly. As a result of this breeding a seed orchard has been established to produce these blight resistant trees. Recently, hundreds of these trees were returned to their native range and after one year they are thriving. With continued work, these trees will hopefully be returned to there place among the might oaks and hickories thoughtout its native range. I would encourage you to support programs such as this to restore devastated plants or we may never see them again!