Returning the American Chestnut Tree to the Northeast
In 1911, seven years after the great chestnut blight was first discovered in the Bronx Zoo in 1904, the destructive fungus was well on its way to wiping out four billion of the trees that once made up a quarter of the Northeast’s hardwoods. The spores required only the tiniest wound to gain entry — a snapped branch, a squirrel’s tooth, a nut-gatherer’s knife could do it. No cure could be found, and by 1940 American chestnut trees had just about vanished, though sprouts still persist today, and still blight.
Now, blight-resistant American chestnuts, 22 years and six generations in the breeding, are coming to New York City, and hopefully the entire Northeastern U.S.
At a ceremony in Prospect Park, where more than 1,400 chestnuts were felled by blight in the first decade of the 20th century alone, officials of the American Chestnut Foundation presented the seeds to the city parks department.
The hope is to help undo one of the city’s, and the nation’s, saddest pieces of botanical history.
Efforts had already begun, though, to crossbreed American chestnuts with blight-resistant Chinese chestnuts. They were never considered hardy enough to warrant widespread planting, but in 1989, the chestnut foundation began a new project at its research farm in Meadowview, Va. It “backcrossed” the Chinese-American hybrids with American chestnuts to produce a tree that was more American with each generation but still resistant to blight.
“We’re hoping these trees will grow 100 feet tall,” said Fred Hebard, the chief scientist for the foundation. “At this point, we’re still in the testing phase to see if that hope is realized. I guess we’ll find out 60 or 80 years from now.”
Via the NYT
