They’ve found another mature American chestnut tree that appears to be resistant to the chestnut blight!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/american-chestnut-tree-find-1.4468043
This is extremely good news. Until the chestnut blight, chestnut trees were the predominant tree in eastern North America. They hope to breed this one with others.
@gannet This is so exciting! Chestnuts are one of the great ghosts of North America. I can't even imagine what it was like here before the blight hit.
I grew up around mature beech/oak/maple forests in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. All of those produce food for mammals (and probably birds); what changes would happen if another food-seed-producing species like chestnut came back?
@varx wouldn't that be awesome? This is the sort of thing I've been wondering myself. I was raised by an environmental statistician who in southern Indiana; he knows a lot about trees because of his earlier research, so I love going out in the woods.
Chestnuts and elms. And, sadly, butternuts are being devastated now, too, though there's apparently some hope for all three. I found this this morning: https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/ja/ja_schlarbaum002.htm
@gannet i heard an old man talking about this at target, I'm glad there is some solution.
@gannet I used to know of a mature American chestnut on a small green between two back roads north of Worchester, Massachusetts. I know of one in Virginia, but it is not doing well.
@BertL Few and far between, but there. Here's hoping!
@gannet I honestly love tree nerds!
@gannet good tree news! I hope there will be progress with kauri dieback in New Zealand also.
@pebble oh, I hadn’t heard about that. Me too!
@gannet Wow, that's totally awesome news! Sadly, the chestnut in my yard (near the end of the driveway) is not an American (is a chinquapin) though I held hope for a long time!