PHILADELPHIA – The American chestnut tree is making a comeback following its near disappearance from U.S. forests and landscapes. On Arbor Day, April 28, 2000 an American chestnut was planted in Pennsylvania in Fairmount Park's Cobbs Creek Park.
With current ongoing efforts to restore the American chestnut, it can be reintroduced into U.S. forests and as a landscaping tree during the first half of the 21st century. The tree, which was planted at the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center, is a hybrid resulting from research that will lead to the development of a 15/16 American chestnut, a tree American in every way except that it has the ability to defend itself against a deadly virus.
Not too long ago, the American chestnut was one of the most important trees in forests from Maine south to Georgia, from the Piedmont west to the Ohio valley. In the heart of its range, a count of trees would have turned up one chestnut for every four oaks, birches, maples and other hardwoods. Wildlife depended on its abundant annual nut crop, as did rural folk and their livestock. Chestnut lumber was prized for everything from musical instruments to barn beams to furniture.
Then the chestnut blight struck. First discovered in 1904 in New York City, the lethal fungus – an accidentally imported Asian organism – spread quickly. In its wake, it left only dead and dying stems. By 1950, except for the shrub-like sprouts the species continually produces (and which also quickly become infected), the keystone species on hundreds of millions of acres of eastern forests had disappeared.
The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) was established in 1983 to restore the tree to its native forests. In 1984, the foundation began using backcross breeding to produce blight-resistant trees. Starting with a cross between Chinese chestnuts (the source of blight resistance) and American chestnuts, TACF staff and volunteers create increasingly American-like seedlings by repeatedly crossing back to American parents. Each generation is inoculated with blight, and only the most resistant trees are used in future crosses. After several generations, the result will be trees that are genetically American except for one characteristic: they are resistant to chestnut blight.
More than 11,000 trees are in the ground at TACF's two research farms in southwestern Virginia, and programs to breed regionally adapted trees are underway in several states including Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana and Connecticut. TACF members in North and South Carolina, Massachusetts and Kentucky will soon develop additional regional adaptation programs.
For more information visit The American Chestnut Foundation's web site at www.acf.org.