Longing for the Forest

The American chestnut tree once dominated the landscape of the Eastern United States. It's was an important tree for man and animals alike, forming a large part of the rural economy at the time of the colonization. And who can forget, "Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands," as well as James Fenimore Cooper's descriptions of the rich, dark, foreboding forests of colonial times?

It was also an important tree for migrating and nesting songbirds, providing cover and food in the form of the abundant insects it hosted. The map at the left shows the range of the American chestnut tree at the beginning of the 19th century.

The virgin stands of American chestnut trees were few and far between by the early part of the twentieth century and, what remained, were wiped out by the chestnut blight, a lethal fungus infection.

John Terborgh, a professor of Biology at Princeton says, in his book "Where Have All the Birds Gone,"

. . . there is no longer any virgin forest east of the Rockies. More than 99 percent of what the colonisits found has been felled. The fraction of a percent that remains is scattered in inaccessible spots where logging was not an economic proposition . . . In sum, all we have to represent the natural vegetation of the East are a few mountaintops, swamps, and ravines. . . Several mammals widespread in the East at the time of settlement--wolf, elk, forest bison, and mountain lion--had been extirpated. The East's most important tree species, the American chestnut, was effectively extinct, and another, the American elm, was not far behind."

American chestnut was once the dominant tree speces in the east. There were an estimated four billion American chestnut trees at the time this country was formed.

According to the American Chestnut Foundation's Web site:

Native wildlife from birds to bears, squirrels to deer, depended on the tree's abundant crops of nutritious nuts. And chestnut was a central part of eastern rural economies. As winter came on, attics were often stacked to the rafters with flour bags full of the glossy, dark brown nuts. Springhouses and smokehouses were hung with hams and other products from livestock that had fattened on the harvest gleanings. And what wasn't consumed was sold.

Chestnut was an important cash crop for many Appalachian families. As year-end holidays approached, nuts by the railroad car-full were shipped to New York, Philadelphia and other cities where street vendors sold them fresh roasted.

The tree was one of the best for timber. It grew straight and often branch-free for 50 feet. Loggers tell of loading entire railroad cars with boards cut from just one tree. Straight-grained, lighter in weight than oak and more easily worked, chestnut was as rot resistant as redwood. It was used for virtually everything - telegraph poles, railroad ties, shingles, paneling, fine furniture, musical instruments, even pulp and plywood.

Maybe there is some cause for hope:

New York Times
May 21, 2006

Stand of Surviving Chestnuts May Hold the Key to a Recovery

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBANY, Ga., May 20 (AP) — A stand of American chestnut trees that somehow escaped a blight that killed off nearly all their kind in the early 1900's has been discovered along a hiking trail near Warm Springs.

The find has stirred excitement among those working to restore the American chestnut, and raises hopes that scientists may be able to use the trees' pollen to breed hardier chestnut trees.

"There's something about this place that has allowed them to endure the blight," said Nathan Klaus, a biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. "It's either that these trees are able to resist the blight, which is unlikely, or Pine Mountain has something unique that is giving these trees resistance."

Pine Mountain, a rugged area at the southern end of the Appalachians, is where Franklin D. Roosevelt built a home and sought treatment after he was stricken with polio in 1921. Experts said the chestnuts might have survived because they had less competition from other trees along a dry, rocky ridge. The fungus that causes the blight thrives in a moist environment.

The largest of the half-dozen or so trees is about 40 feet tall and 20 to 30 years old, and is believed to be the southernmost American chestnut discovered so far that is capable of flowering and producing nuts.

"This is a terrific find," said David Keehn, president of the Georgia chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation. "A tree of this size is one in a million."

The foundation may use pollen from the trees in a breeding program intended to restore the population with blight-resistant trees.

"When the flowers are right, we're going to rush down and pollinate the flowers, collect the seeds a few weeks later and collect the nuts," Mr. Klaus said. "If we ever find a genetic solution to the chestnut blight, genes from that tree will find their way into those trees."

The foundation has been working for about 15 years to develop a blight-resistant variety. The goal is to infuse the American chestnut with the blight-resistant genes of the Chinese chestnut.

American chestnuts once made up about 25 percent of the forests in the eastern United States, with an estimated four billion trees from Maine to Mississippi and Florida.

The trees helped satisfy demand for roasted chestnuts, and their rot-resistant wood was used to make fence posts, utility poles, barns, homes, furniture and musical instruments.

The trees, which could grow to a height of 100 feet and a diameter of 8 feet or more, were almost wiped out by a fast-spreading fungus discovered in 1904.