Helping restore a giant.

The American chestnut was once plentiful in eastern forests, an important food source for wildlife, as well as a cash crop for rural communities.

In 1904, there were an estimated four billion chestnut trees in this country. A fungus introduced through the importation of Asian chestnut trees, has rendered the American version nearly extinct. The blight, dispersed by airborne fungal spores, spread into the bark and underlying vascular tissue, disrupting the flow of nutrients and killing the trees.

Today, the American Chestnut Foundation is dedicated to developing a blight-resistant variant. Researchers are trying to breed blight-resistance from the Chinese chestnut tree into the American while maintaining the American chestnut’s characteristics. Hartney Greymont was contacted by the Massachusetts chapter to help in this exciting restoration program. Amazingly, two healthy 40-year old American chestnuts were identified in Newton, Massachusetts and deemed ideal candidates for the breeding program.

Under the direction of the foundation, and with the use of aerial lift equipment, two of our arborists helped researchers pollinate the Newton chestnuts with pollen from trees exhibiting resistance to the blight. We hope that the chestnuts produced in the fall contain disease resistant genes. After the fall harvest, they will be planted in a research orchard at Moore State Park in Paxton, Massachusetts. In about six years the trees will be injected with the blight-causing fungus, and their disease resistance studied.

With luck, a blight-resistant American chestnut hybrid could be restored to the eastern forest within a decade. To learn more about this organization’s efforts, contact The American Chestnut Foundation at: www.acf.org.