The New London Conservation Commission embarked on a very interesting and important forestry project in the spring of 2019. We joined the American Chestnut Restoration efforts of The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) to restore this near mythical tree to the Eastern U.S. woodlands. The American Chestnut (AC) comprised 25% of the forest in our region and provided all kinds of benefits to our society and ecosystem. Trees were known to live 500 years reaching heights of 100 feet or more with a diameter of over 10 feet. They were a magnificent staple tree from Maine through Appalachia and the Ohio Valley. Even in large cities like Worcester, MA, chestnut trees thrived. Families would gather nuts for their own enjoyment or feed the nutritious food to their livestock. The strong chestnut wood had a natural resistance to rot and was often used as building material for wood beams and furniture. It was devastating when the parasitic blight, Cryphonectria parasitica, was discovered in AC trees at the Bronx Zoo in 1904. This imported outbreak eventually destroyed nearly 4 Billion trees, nearly 100% of all AC trees.
The AC tree was gone before forest science existed to document its role in the ecosystem. TACF was founded in 1983 and partnered with the U.S. Forest Service, they have jointly worked for several decades to restore the AC to its native range. But at this very moment, on farms and woodlots scattered across the native range of the species, an army of volunteers is working on perhaps the most audacious conservation project of our time: bringing back the American chestnut. The premise behind this dream is a bit of botany 101. Chinese chestnuts evolved with a blight and carry blight-resistant genes, which American-strain trees lack. By crossing an American chestnut with a Chinese chestnut, you end up with a tree that has half the genetic material of each. Cross the progeny of that tree back to an American chestnut, and nuts from that tree will carry 75% of the genetics of a true American chestnut. By continuing this backcrossing for generation after generation, TACF hopes to produce trees with all the characteristics of American chestnuts, and the blight resistance of the Chinese trees.
NLCC presently has three active AC Experimental Forest locations, with a total of 70+ seedlings in the ground. The seedlings range in age from 1 to 4 years, with heights of 12 inches to 6 feet. Most of this stock is 1 year seedlings grown at TACF nursery, but we have some seedlings that we started from seed nuts here in New London. Now entering year 5, we are optimistic that we will see significant growth from these trees which are becoming more well established.
An interesting article about the American Chestnut can be found here.
