Hope Sprouts

In a fence row in Adair County stands a large American chestnut tree that should have died years ago when most others of its species were destroyed by disease.

Yet this tree, found in the late 1990s by forester Billy Joe Fudge on the Charles England farm near Columbia, somehow survived the sweeping chestnut blight that destroyed millions of acres of American chestnuts throughout their native eastern U.S. range between 1904 and the late 1940s.

The American chestnut’s demise was considered by some the greatest ecological disaster of the 1900s.

American chestnuts grew straight, fast, and tall, and produced good lumber for homes, barns, and furniture. They were used for telegraph poles, ship masts, rail fences, cross ties, and many other essentials. The wood’s popularity for use in cradles and coffins earned the American chestnut a “cradle to the grave” reputation.

Livestock and wildlife fattened on its mast, and the nuts were harvested and sold for roasting. American chestnuts spread into beautiful landscape trees when given room to grow beyond the forest. Many communities took the name Chestnut Grove.

The Adair County American chestnut measures more than 40 inches in diameter and is believed by Rex Mann, founder of the Kentucky chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation, to have grown through several years when most others of its breed were dying.

Today, there is renewed hope that the American chestnut may one day reclaim its lost prominence.

Scientists have been able to carefully control pollination, crosses, and back-crosses of trees like the one in Adair County that are long-term survivors of the blight to produce trees that retain the excellent timber and nut-producing characteristics of the American chestnut, but with the blight resistance of the Chinese chestnut.

Lynn Garrison of Eminence, president of the Kentucky chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation, reports that the American chestnut seedlings being grown experimentally in numerous test plantings around Kentucky are doing especially well on lands reclaimed from strip mining.

Research orchards under the data management of Dr. Anne Myers Bobigian of Louisville are located across Kentucky from Pike County in the east to Todd County in the west. Some young blight-resistant trees may soon be introduced into Kentucky forests, parks, and schools.

There is also promising research for prevention of a secondary threat to the American chestnut from root rot, which killed many trees before they were struck by the blight.

Blight-resistant seedlings can be obtained through a sponsor donation to The American Chestnut Foundation, www.acf.org. The donor needs to report on the trees to the foundation annually.

Pure American Kentucky seedlings, which are susceptible to blight but may live long enough to produce seeds for a few years and help preserve native germplasm, are sometimes available. Contact Bobigian (e-mail her at annemonique@bellsouth.net) about nut availability.

To learn more about the Kentucky chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation or to report the location of a mature American chestnut tree, call Lynn Garrison at (502) 655-0538, e-mail him at lynn.garrison@earthlink.net
, or go to www.kychestnut.org.