# American Chestnut



## tree md (Mar 4, 2007)

Just curious if anyone here has ever worked on an American Chestnut or indeed, even laid eyes on one. My grandfather was from KY and told me that the majority of trees in the forrest was Chestnuts where he came from. That is until the blight came through and killed them all off. I personally have never seen one except for in pictures and have spent my whole life running around the forrests of the Appalachains

Just curious if anyone has ever seen one. Here's a link to a site with lots of pics of American Chestnuts and some info on them and the ongoing restoration effort:

http://www2.volstate.edu/jschibig/resurrectingthechestnut.htm


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## begleytree (Mar 4, 2007)

I have a 1920's tree book that talks about a disease that is in NY that is killing the chestnut trees but scientists are developing vaccienes for it and it should not be a problem. 
just odd to read about the blight in the present to future tense
-Ralph


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## Castenea (Mar 5, 2007)

Have seen Chestnut sprouts and saplings. The most accessible were alongside the Appalachian trail north of Washington Monument state park in MD.

Actually saw one that was over 5"DBH in WV, but it had cankers and I doubt it is still alive (top was already dead):bang: .


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## moray (Mar 5, 2007)

*Growing in my Yard*

I have three 1-year-old chestnuts growing in my yard. The parent tree is a wild tree, apparently still blight-free, growing a few miles from my house. It is about 60 feet tall and measures 14 inches DBH. I have seen at least a dozen wild trees growing within 25 miles of my house, the biggest being about 45 feet tall, 55 feet across the crown, and perhaps 2 feet in diameter. You can get seedlings from the American Chestnut Foundation. Native trees are quite uncommon, but even here in Maine at the northern end of their historic range, there are at least a few hundred still making it in the wild. All will ultimately succumb to the blight, but many will become decent-sized trees before that happens. You can get much more information from the ACF, including leads to local people involved in the recovery effort.

A really terrific and very interesting tree!


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## moray (Mar 5, 2007)

*Vaccines???*



begleytree said:


> I have a 1920's tree book that talks about a disease that is in NY that is killing the chestnut trees but scientists are developing vaccienes for it and it should not be a problem.
> just odd to read about the blight in the present to future tense
> -Ralph



Are you sure? Plants don't have immune systems, so you can't vaccinate them against anything.

The "treatments" for chestnut blight that I am aware of include some sort of wet mud pack applied over the cankers to smother the fungus, introducing a much less virulent form of the fungus that gradually replaces the serious form in the wild, and breeding resistance into the American Chestnut by backcrossing over several generations with disease-resistant Chinese Chestnuts. After enough such backcrossing, you end up with a 15/16 American Chestnut with good disease resistance. In Virginia, I believe, they now have a bunch of such trees and are about to begin reintroducing them to the wild in the heart of their old range.


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## PUclimber (Mar 5, 2007)

There's still one standing in West Lafayette just off Purdue's campus that has been used for reproduction and experiments.


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## PA Plumber (Mar 5, 2007)

We have a small grove of American Chestnut. The saplings are in great shape. Anything in the 4" diameter range look bad with lots of blight or dead. I understand the U.S. has been working with the Chinese to get a tree that is 99% U.S. American Chestnut, yet blight resistant. That "hybrid" should be available in the next couple of years.


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## begleytree (Mar 5, 2007)

moray said:


> Are you sure? Plants don't have immune systems, so you can't vaccinate them against anything.
> 
> The "treatments" for chestnut blight that I am aware of include some sort of wet mud pack applied over the cankers to smother the fungus, introducing a much less virulent form of the fungus that gradually replaces the serious form in the wild, and breeding resistance into the American Chestnut by backcrossing over several generations with disease-resistant Chinese Chestnuts. After enough such backcrossing, you end up with a 15/16 American Chestnut with good disease resistance. In Virginia, I believe, they now have a bunch of such trees and are about to begin reintroducing them to the wild in the heart of their old range.



I realize this. I merely quoted the book. wondered if anyone would catch that.
-Ralph


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## ATH (Mar 5, 2007)

The stump strputs are actually fairly common within their original native range. They grow long enough to produce a couple of seeds and feed the roots a little, then sucumb to the blight.

I am looking forward to the time when a truly resistant strain is widely available.


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## treevet (Mar 5, 2007)

There was/is an A Chestnut just north of Flemington NJ by a big barn converted into an exotic house. I recognized it as not being a ch chestnut and had it verified by others. It was/is stunted by disease and approx 3ft dia., maybe 20 feet tall. There was much trim work on old houses w beautiful chnut wood.in that area. From what old timers told me it was a 100 ft capable, beautiful tree. I picture it somewhat like a n red oak in the woods. The are a few 8" dia a chestnuts on an old prop in my current nborhood in Cincy I found last year.


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## PA Plumber (Mar 5, 2007)

The Chestnut trees on our place mature enough to drop seed pods for a couple of years and then die. I haven't seen any of the large trees as described on this thread.


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## WoodBurner44 (Mar 6, 2007)

We just had a large (16" DH) American Chestnut die on our place. It had been bearing nuts for years and many saplings growing in that area are now bearing nuts.

The University of West Virginia has been running a breeding program in Morgantown WV to develop a blight resistant Chestnut. It is a very long term project as it takes ten or more years to see the results of a cross. Have not heard when they expect a resistant tree to be available to the public.


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## younggun (Mar 6, 2007)

Ive seen a couple, mature and dropping seed, don't know how big but i can check the next time I'm near their


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## buzz sawyer (Mar 6, 2007)

I have relatives in northern PA who had one. From what I was told, the sprouts grow until the bark starts to develop furrows, then the blight gets hold. Can anyone confirm that?


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## ATH (Mar 7, 2007)

buzz sawyer said:


> I have relatives in northern PA who had one. From what I was told, the sprouts grow until the bark starts to develop furrows, then the blight gets hold. Can anyone confirm that?


confirmed


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## treevet (Mar 15, 2007)

"Anne Frank's tree may be cut down", Cincinnati Enquirer, Sunday, March 11, 2007 (The Associated Press). Amsterdam, Netherlands- Amsterdam's city council gave the owner of the chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding a license to cut it down. Opponents have six weeks to file an objection. lThe large, 150 year old tree has been attacked by a fungus and is in danger of falling down. The tree is familiar to some 25 million readers of the "The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank". It stands in the courtyard of the "secret annex," the canal-side warehouse where her family hid during the Nazi occupation. ........"From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree............as long as this exists,....I cannot be unhappy". Could this be a horsechestnut tree or are there large chestnuts in the Netherlands?


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## oldirty (Mar 15, 2007)

*not one of my proudest moments*

but at a company i worked at years ago we took one down. a big'n nonetheless. 

this was more or less when i first got started in the biz. so i did not take the moment to admire the big fella.

obvoiusly i did not know or appreciate just what it was i was looking at.  





oldirty


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## treevet (Mar 15, 2007)

I m real curious what a big honker a. chestnut 120 footer looked like. Kind like a dinosaur. You can see pictures but there s no drama.


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## CRN Tree (Mar 15, 2007)

I know of only two here in a small valley both were both lost during the flood in june. Only a few people even knew what they were.


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## J.Walker (Mar 15, 2007)

*Chestnut*

We did a removal before Christmas of a large dead chestnut, about 32"at breast hight. We were not sure what kind of tree it was, no bark around the trunk. After the tree was on the ground you could tell it was chestnut by the grain, something like white oak. Very dense wood, glad I had the tractor with a loader on it to pick up the firewood size pieces.
I have a couple old dressers that are chestnut and a grain is wonderfull.
I find some folks who confuse the Buckeye tree (state tree of Ohio) with the Chestnut tree. Buckeye tree wood is soft compared to the Chestnut tho.
What makes a Chestnut American? Going to digout my tree books and have a look onless some one can help?
Thanks


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## ATH (Mar 15, 2007)

J.Walker said:


> I find some folks who confuse the Buckeye tree (state tree of Ohio) with the Chestnut tree. Buckeye tree wood is soft compared to the Chestnut tho.
> What makes a Chestnut American? Going to digout my tree books and have a look onless some one can help?
> Thanks


Buckeye is in the Horsechestnut family (Hippocastanaceae).


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## Tim Krause (Apr 1, 2007)

*plantation*



tree md said:


> Just curious if anyone here has ever worked on an American Chestnut or indeed, even laid eyes on one. My grandfather was from KY and told me that the majority of trees in the forrest was Chestnuts where he came from. That is until the blight came through and killed them all off. I personally have never seen one except for in pictures and have spent my whole life running around the forrests of the Appalachains
> 
> Just curious if anyone has ever seen one. Here's a link to a site with lots of pics of American Chestnuts and some info on them and the ongoing restoration effort:
> 
> http://www2.volstate.edu/jschibig/resurrectingthechestnut.htm




there is an american chestnut plantation near my house. it is on state property. all the trees are tagged and are from 12-20" dbh. they actually collect the nuts with bucket trucks and try to germinate them. they expanded the plantation recently and made the new section with high fencing. a couple years ago we removed one on a property. it was around 24" dbh. only one i've climbed.


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## Kewadin (Apr 2, 2007)

http://www.westshorepub.com/primetime/default.php?action=getDefaultArticle&issue_id=346 I would like to contact him and ask him to show me one. I doubt if I have ever seen one. I remember reading another link about a stand in Wisconsin where they were trying to vaccinate them. If I can find the link I'll post it.(http://chestnutfungi.com/research.php)


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## moray (Jul 20, 2007)

*chestnut pics*

I took these yesterday of the big yard tree near Dexter, ME. The tree is almost exactly 3 feet in diameter at the base, a bit over 35 feet tall, and about 50 feet in spread. It has the classic form adopted when there is nothing near it competing for light. It is about 10 days past the peak of flowering, but note how the profusion of catkins gives the tree a very distinctive form. This tree produces thousands of burrs each year, but no fruits, as there is no other tree nearby to pollinate it.


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## b1rdman (Jul 20, 2007)

moray said:


> I took these yesterday of the big yard tree near Dexter, ME. The tree is almost exactly 3 feet in diameter at the base, a bit over 35 feet tall, and about 50 feet in spread. It has the classic form adopted when there is nothing near it competing for light. It is about 10 days past the peak of flowering, but note how the profusion of catkins gives the tree a very distinctive form. This tree produces thousands of burrs each year, but no fruits, as there is no other tree nearby to pollinate it.



If you're in southern Maine and you have interest in the tree you may want to call these folks. You're not too far away. It's a pretty good story about a chestnut tree that was recently found not too far from me.

http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070717/FOSTERS01/107170264


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## jrparbor04 (Jul 20, 2007)

wow,,,you guys are really missing out on a great tree,,,i have two in my parks department here in st. louis that is beautiful,,,no dead loss and produce tons of chestnuts per year,,,the chinese people are always all over the nuts once they hit the ground,,,i believe there are three or four only 50 yards away from each other and are about 35ft tall,,,i will actually see them on monday and tuesday,,,i will try to get some pics


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## Thillmaine (Jul 20, 2007)

*Am chestnut*

We were doing a removal of a few oaks the other day in wellsley mass and saw a small, approximatley 2 inch caliper american chestnut in the woods. I thought it was a saw tooth oak, according to the leaves but someone had said it was a chestnut, hard to see its form,. but looke dlike an interresting tree.


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## moray (Jul 20, 2007)

b1rdman said:


> If you're in southern Maine and you have interest in the tree you may want to call these folks. You're not too far away. It's a pretty good story about a chestnut tree that was recently found not too far from me.



Thanks for the link, b1rdman, it's a nice story. Using my mapping software I determined that the Dexter tree I mentioned is 143 miles NNE of Farmington, NH, just above the 45th parallel. As described in the story you posted, it was pollinated and bagged a couple of years ago and over 100 nuts were collected. Most of the pollen used in the Maine recovery effort comes from Virginia.


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## booboo (Jul 20, 2007)

Good time for this thread to pop up. I had one growing on the edge of my yard when I bought the house 7 years ago, looked really healthy, no sign of blight at first. I was around 6" DBH and maybe 20' high. Within 3 years, it hit 8" DBH, started to get furrows in the bark, got badly blighted and died within a year. I cut it down and burned it. Last year, I noticed a couple of seedlings near the old stump, assumed they were stump sprouts. Last week I was cutting brush on the other side of the yard and found another seedling, maybe 150' away from the others. Obviously not a stump sprout as there's never been a chestnut there since I've owned the place. All the seedlings look great.

I'd have loved to see the old trees, some of the photos are just amazing. Maybe someday they'll be back like that, but not in my lifetime.


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## 046 (Jul 21, 2007)

in Tulsa and only know of one surviving chestnut tree. it's a large beautiful tree throwing off loads of nuts every year. 

most folks don't have a clue of what they are looking at. I'll have to take pictures and post it here.


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## jrparbor04 (Jul 23, 2007)

ill try to get the camera tomorrow and take some pics of the ones i have in our parks


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## 046 (Jul 23, 2007)

sure miss the edit function...

since this chestnut tree is throwing off loads of nuts. there's got to be another chestnut tree close by. 



046; said:


> in Tulsa and only know of one surviving chestnut tree. it's a large beautiful tree throwing off loads of nuts every year.
> 
> most folks don't have a clue of what they are looking at. I'll have to take pictures and post it here.


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## moray (Jul 24, 2007)

046 said:


> since this chestnut tree is throwing off loads of nuts. there's got to be another chestnut tree close by.



046, are you talking about loads of nuts, or loads of burrs? Even an unfertilized tree will throw off burrs, and they even contain smallish concave nuts. But these nuts are not plump and edible (the squirrels ignore them), and they are sterile. I was fooled last year into thinking I had found a tree with fertile nuts, which I intended to plant, but I was wrong.

If you do have another tree nearby, it should be within a couple hundred yards.


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## 046 (Jul 24, 2007)

this local chestnut tree throws off loads of mature chestnuts inside pods. I've lived close by this tree for a number of years and have roasted chestnuts off this tree a number of times. 

years ago when I was running my Auto Parts store, a good customer used to bring me bags of chestnuts. he told me chestnut tree were kinda rare, but I never realized just how rare until recently. 

drove by the chestnut tree a few minutes ago. it's massive by surviving chestnut tree standards. looks to be 2ft+ DBH. 

I'll be posting pictures and an actual measurement soon. 



moray; said:


> 046, are you talking about loads of nuts, or loads of burrs? Even an unfertilized tree will throw off burrs, and they even contain smallish concave nuts. But these nuts are not plump and edible (the squirrels ignore them), and they are sterile. I was fooled last year into thinking I had found a tree with fertile nuts, which I intended to plant, but I was wrong.
> 
> If you do have another tree nearby, it should be within a couple hundred yards.


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## 046 (Jul 24, 2007)

just got back from taking pictures and actual measurements of this beautiful mature chestnut tree in Tulsa, OK. 

sorry can't give out location. 

measures 89in circumference or aprox 28in DBH
trunk is smaller near base, 24in dia. 
height is aprox. 60ft
in good health loaded with nuts. 

now I'm curious as to location of second chestnut close by.


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## gasman (Jul 24, 2007)

http://www.acf.org./

Some answers can be found at this link about the history and status of the American Chestnut.


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## 046 (Jul 24, 2007)

thanks gasman, based upon leaf id. it's definitely an American chestnut. 

left is American, right is Chinese chestnut








gasman; said:


> http://www.acf.org./
> 
> Some answers can be found at this link about the history and status of the American Chestnut.


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## gasman (Jul 24, 2007)

I've been thinking about volunteering to help with the project, but if I take on one more thing my wife will absolutely kill me. It would be a good thing to do if I get the time.


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## Lumberjacked (Jul 24, 2007)

I too know where a mature, relatively healthy looking American chestnut is. It is in upstate NY in a small town called Skaneateles. A customer there had me care for it the last couple of years before I moved. I basically removed what little die back it showed, and that was about it. I wanted to create as few wounds as possible. At this time I was taking a tree pathology class at SUNY ESF and asked my prof. as to why this Chestnut was still alive and fairly healthy. He basically told me that the Chestnuts that are still surviving are isolated examples and will eventually succumb to the blight. ESF is one of the leading research facilities for Chestnut Blight and other pathogens such as Dutch Elm Disease. 

Chesnut Blight is a type of a diffuse canker fungus. This type of canker fungus-host combination results in a super aggressive fungus that attacks the host with such vitality it doesnt not allow the host to produce a callus defense wall. There are many aspects that make CB a "super pathogen" like its ability to survive on other hosts like oaks, chinkapin, red maple, and sumac are a few. Other characteristics of CB are; numerous means to spread its spores, infects through commonly produced infection points (man, birds, insects, wind breakage), invades so rapidly that Chestnuts can cannot induce resistance mechanisms, and CB can survive extreme conditions. This is just the tip of the iceberg really, I would look on line for more info and updated research.


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## Lumberjacked (Jul 24, 2007)

I too know where a mature, relatively healthy looking American chestnut is. It is in upstate NY in a small town called Skaneateles. A customer there had me care for it the last couple of years before I moved. I basically removed what little die back it showed, and that was about it. I wanted to create as few wounds as possible. At this time I was taking a tree pathology class at SUNY ESF and asked my prof. as to why this Chestnut was still alive and fairly healthy. He basically told me that the Chestnuts that are still surviving are isolated examples and will eventually succumb to the blight. ESF is one of the leading research facilities for Chestnut Blight and other pathogens such as Dutch Elm Disease. 

Chesnut Blight is a type of a diffuse canker fungus. This type of canker fungus-host combination results in a super aggressive fungus that attacks the host with such vitality it doesnt not allow the host to produce a callus defense wall. There are many aspects that make CB a "super pathogen" like its ability to survive on other hosts like oaks, chinkapin, red maple, and sumac are a few. Other characteristics of CB are; numerous means to spread its spores, infects through commonly produced infection points (man, birds, insects, wind breakage), invades so rapidly that Chestnuts can cannot induce resistance mechanisms, and CB can survive extreme conditions. This is just the tip of the iceberg really, I would look on line for more info and updated research.


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## moray (Jul 24, 2007)

Nice pics, that's a beautiful tree, 046. Let us know if you find the partner tree that is pollinating it. That tree will also be bearing fertile nuts pollinated by this tree. If you plant some nuts, you might be lucky and grow a tree that will start flowering in only 5 or 6 years. I planted 5 trees in my yard and hope to get trees that will live at least 10 years, reach 30 feet in height, and give me several crops of nuts (all reasonable expectations, I have been told). It's a great little project, and other people are starting to show some interest.


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## M.D. Vaden (Jul 24, 2007)

Hard decision sometimes to intervene with resistant cultivars, or decide to let nature take its course as it has so many time to provide much of what we enjoy in natural environments.


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## moray (Jul 25, 2007)

*sterile nuts*

Here are some nuts I collected last fall. They are duds.


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## jrparbor04 (Jul 25, 2007)

beautiful tree,,,one of the few that i have are about that size,,,havent been able to make it out there to actually take the pics lately,,,i have three trees,,,to be exact on fertile nuts to choose from,,,i will now plan on taking some nuts from each tree and trying to cultivate them in the ground naturally and also in our tree nursery we have


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## tree md (Jul 26, 2007)

046 said:


> just got back from taking pictures and actual measurements of this beautiful mature chestnut tree in Tulsa, OK.
> 
> sorry can't give out location.
> 
> ...



Great find 046!!!

Beautiful tree. I live in Tulsa and would love to hook up and get a few nuts from you sometime so I can try to plant them. PM me if you would be willing to do that.

When I think of the American Chestnuts and what a sight they must have been it always makes me a little sad. Kind of like the loss of the great buffalo herds. I have read that when they started building the railroads that trains would sometimes have to stop and wait for 4 and 5 days just to let a huge herd pass. Likewise, I have read that 1 in 3 trees in the old eastern forests were American Chestnuts. I remember reading somewhere that it is estimated that the blight killed 3 billion trees.


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## DadF (Jul 26, 2007)

The tree in West Lafayette that PUclimber talked about was kind of hidden until I found it again and sent an email to the ACF. One of my old forestry professors remembered it being there after I said something to him about(G. Parker in case your wondering PU). I know that ACF was in here last and did work with it but I never got a chance to go back and talk with them. It is on property that Purdue had been trying to obtain for years but the owner sold it to the United Methodist for a new church. I had been taking care of the lot for a couple of years before the church got around to finally breaking ground and that was how I found it again.


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## moray (Oct 20, 2007)

*This year's harvest*

These two photos show nuts and burrs collected 10 days ago from the 60-ft American chestnut near Madison, ME. The tree produced over 900 fertile nuts this year, a bumper crop, but it may not produce again, as it has become seriously blighted.









The fertile nuts are large and plump (teaspoon gives scale), whereas the duds are concave and much smaller. Burrs often contain both. Typically there are 3 nuts per burr, but the burr nearest the spoon in the upper photo contains 5, the most I have seen.

The burrs are irresistable to squirrels, who will gnaw off small limbs to get them to drop. Though the spines are very sharp, especially on burrs that have dried out and turned brown, they seem to pose no problem for the squirrels, who can easily rip the burrs open. Many burrs open while still on the tree and dump their nuts before falling. 

A good windstorm at the right time can dump a huge load of burrs on the ground, overwhelming the squirrels and giving a human a decent chance at a sizable harvest.

The burrs closest to the ground and closest to the trunk ripen first. When I collected nuts 10 days ago, only the top 10 feet of the tree had any burrs left. I used my Big Shot to get a line over several top branches all in a bundle. By pulling and jerking on both legs of the line, I was able to break off or shake loose a dozen or more burrs that clearly had not been visited by the squirrels.

I will stratify the nuts over the winter. If all goes as planned, there should be a couple of dozen germinating plants waiting for me next Spring.


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## BostonBull (Oct 20, 2007)

am jealous! I wish I knew where that tree was. Shame that it has the blight though.

Good luck with the saplings I hope all goes well for you!


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## 046 (Oct 21, 2007)

got a decent crop from the Tulsa 60ft Chestnut tree... mix of fertile nuts and shriveled one's (mostly shriveled). there's another tree close by, but have not located. 

no sign of blight on tree. this entire area's chestnut trees were almost wiped out by blight years ago. 

I'll be posting pic's later.. 

what's the best way to germinate?


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## callagher (Oct 22, 2007)

*Hybrid chestnut tree?*

I was given half a dozen burrs by a family member (My Mom). The story goes...they (Mom & Dad) were walking through a state park and saw a Forest Service type person planting seeds. My Mom asked him what he was planting...he said hybridized Amercian Chestnut. My Mom went on about how I was interested in finding some seedlings or seeds when "they" decided what to re-plant...blight resistant American Chestnut (if they ever figure out how to do that)...or hybridized trees, if that was the only answer.

The State Forest person was amazed that someone even knew or cared about then American Chestnut situation...and he gave my Mom 6 burrs, to give to me.

Anyone have an opinion on these hybrisized trees?


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## moray (Oct 22, 2007)

046 said:


> what's the best way to germinate?



I haven't done it yet, but I was instructed by a pro who does it every year. He uses one-quart plastic zip-lock baggies full of slightly damp peatmoss. The nuts are layered in the bag so they don't touch each other (up to 50 in a bag), and then they are placed in the refrigerator for the winter. Punch a few holes in the upper bag to allow gas exchange, and keep the temperature just above freezing. How much moisture? Take half a bag's worth of peat moss and soak it in water, then squeeze out all the moisture you can with your hands. Mix that with an equal volume of dry peat moss. The mixture will be about right. If you search around the TACF web site, you can find more info. Good luck!



callagher said:


> Anyone have an opinion on these hybrisized trees?



The trees provided for sale by the Maine chapter of TACF are 100% American, and as such, are fully susceptible to blight. I am not aware of anyone supplying hybrid chestnuts. It is the goal of the Maine chapter, and probably of all the other state chapters as well, to provide 100% blight-resistant 15/16 American/Chinese chestnut seedlings for public distribution, and to restock the forests with those same trees. To release earlier hybrids simply invites contaminating the final hard-won release trees with Chinese genes, and possibly ending up with a forest full of trees with poor (Chinese) form and with unknown genetic ancestry.

In other words, planting currently available hybrids is a bad idea. But even the 100% American trees can live many years before succumbing to blight, and can easily survive long enough to produce fruit. In fact I just found a hitherto unknown (I think!) chestnut in the woods two blocks from my house! It is 35 feet tall, 5" DBH, and would certainly be bearing fruit but for the fact it does not receive quite enough direct sunlight.

Maine expects to have final release trees within 10 years, and I think Virginia may have release trees in just another couple of years.


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## 046 (Oct 23, 2007)

too early to tell..... due to size of this mature tree. high probability this tree was alive when blight wiped out almost all chestnut trees in Tulsa area. 

either this tree is blight resistant or was isolated when blight went through this area. logic says it's more likely natural resistance. it's a near certainty this tree and other chestnut tree close by have already been exposed. 

plan is to plant a few burrs in the ground to allow natural cold cycle to occur. there's another local arborist that's also interested in germinating a few plants. 

we'll see how it goes...


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## marcos (Jan 22, 2008)

moray said:


> The trees provided for sale by the Maine chapter of TACF are 100% American, and as such, are fully susceptible to blight. I am not aware of anyone supplying hybrid chestnuts. It is the goal of the Maine chapter, and probably of all the other state chapters as well, to provide 100% blight-resistant 15/16 American/Chinese chestnut seedlings for public distribution, and to restock the forests with those same trees. To release earlier hybrids simply invites contaminating the final hard-won release trees with Chinese genes, and possibly ending up with a forest full of trees with poor (Chinese) form and with unknown genetic ancestry.
> 
> In other words, planting currently available hybrids is a bad idea. But even the 100% American trees can live many years before succumbing to blight, and can easily survive long enough to produce fruit. In fact I just found a hitherto unknown (I think!) chestnut in the woods two blocks from my house! It is 35 feet tall, 5" DBH, and would certainly be bearing fruit but for the fact it does not receive quite enough direct sunlight.
> 
> Maine expects to have final release trees within 10 years, and I think Virginia may have release trees in just another couple of years.



Here's an example of a newer American Chestnut project going on right now in eastern Ohio, on old strip mine property, with the cooperation of Ohio University, Miami University of Ohio, and the American Chestnut Foundation :

http://news.research.ohiou.edu/noteb...x.php?item=358

( maybe this is what callagher was talking about ?!?...the strip mine reclamation project last spring was in about the same part of Ohio as he's from....but I doubt they were dealing with 'seeds' or 'nuts' at all )

________________________

moray, you got to admit it's tough...waiting around for maybe another decade or so for the (hopefully) 'ace-in-the-hole' blight-resistant American Chestnut to be confirmed truly "blight-free"..(and maybe not :jawdrop: ?!?)

And then, of course, probably another solid 3 to 5 years before any of them could be grown to the size where they could be marketed...
...not to mention what the *price* of them will be at that point !! 

Are you saying it's dangerous to the overall future success of the American Chestnut to plant ANY hybrids, like the Revival, Clapper and Dunstan ?

If so, why exactly?




Is there anyone out there who's planted hybrids that's had successes?
Or Failures? 


I'd like to try to grow some here in SW Ohio...a little out of their natural range I know, with high pH and clayey soils.
But I know what I'm doing with soil amendments like sand, sulfur, cottonseed meal, and the like; to make happy homes for many a chestnut tree in this area when / if the time comes.

And I can't think of a better way to address the southward encroachment of the Emerald Ash Borer (a.k.a. "Green Menace" :blob6: ) into this area by answering a disaster like that with the miracle of the American Chestnuts!


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## moray (Jan 23, 2008)

marcos said:


> http://news.research.ohiou.edu/noteb...x.php?item=358


marcos, I couldn't get your link to work...




marcos said:


> moray, you got to admit it's tough...waiting around for maybe another decade or so for the (hopefully) 'ace-in-the-hole' blight-resistant American Chestnut to be confirmed truly "blight-free"..(and maybe not ?!?)


It may not be quite that bad, but you make a good point. They don't know for sure it will work, but the chief geneticist for the TACF program, whom I met a couple of months ago, is cautiously optimistic. 

The Maine chapter of TACF, me included, got a guided tour of one of the Maine breeding orchards of 3rd backcross trees that had been intentionally innoculated with the fungus to determine resistance levels. The geneticist was showing us the trees about 3 months later. Since one parent of all the trees was pure American, and the other was a 2nd backcross hybrid, none of the trees could have more than half the resistance genes, and many would have less than that. By measuring the size of the blight canker on the trees, one estimates the level of resistance, which presumably correlates with the number of resistance genes. The least resistant trees are culled, and the best ones continue in the breeding program. It is worth noting that even a fully resistant Chinese chestnut will develop a canker when challenged in this way, but the canker stops expanding when still quite small, and the tree is not threatened. In any event, this test for resistance seems quite rough, and there is still no hard knowledge about the genetics of resistance (they believe 2 or 3 genes are involved, and fully resistant trees are homozygous for all the genes involved). All this uncertainty justifies your skeptical comment. 



marcos said:


> Are you saying it's dangerous to the overall future success of the American Chestnut to plant ANY hybrids, like the Revival, Clapper and Dunstan ?
> 
> If so, why exactly?



This is a good question. The short answer is my warning probably comes too late. The long answer again involves the genetics. The ideal recovery program would have been to find a few excellent specimens of pure American trees and simply inject them with the 3 genes for resistance. Someday they may be able to do this, or something very like it. But since the genetics of resistance is not understood, the compromise plan is to breed hybrid trees that are 15/16 American and 1/16 Chinese. We have to put up with that 1/16 as the price of getting the resistance genes. If I remember right, the first American trees chosen were Clapper and Graves, which were big survivor trees with good form. Subsequent backcrosses are made to the best local survivors that can be found. When final release trees are available in a given area, most of the genes in the release trees will have come from local trees.

After all this effort to minimize the Chinese contribution and maximize the American, the last thing you want surrounding your happy new forest of 15/16 American chestnuts is a bunch of Chinese or other hybrids wafting pollen into the forest. The genes will flow into and out of the forest with every pollen crop, and you will eventually have a forest considerably diluted from the 15/16 American you started with. But as I say, it is probably too late to prevent this.


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## marcos (Jan 23, 2008)

moray said:


> After all this effort to minimize the Chinese contribution and maximize the American, the last thing you want surrounding your happy new forest of 15/16 American chestnuts is a bunch of Chinese or other hybrids wafting pollen into the forest. The genes will flow into and out of the forest with every pollen crop, and you will eventually have a forest considerably diluted from the 15/16 American you started with. But as I say, it is probably too late to prevent this.



Sorry, moray...

I'll try the 2006 rural eastern Ohio strip-mine chestnut planting project again here. :

http://news.research.ohiou.edu/notebook/index.php?item=358

Exciting stuff, and close to home.....!

So I'm gathering by what you're saying, that sometime in the future my kids or grandkids may indeed see a comeback American Chestnut tree (or a close enough genetic variation) growing in the woods producing nuts just like what my great-grandpa and Bing Crosby knew. But just like what commonly happens with some *oaks*, the pollen mixes in the forest, producing all kinds of wierd variations over time, right?

Would it be safe to assume that more isolated groups of American Chestnut plantings, maybe at larger sites like municipal parks, or in and around larger campuses and buisiness parks in the future, would be a great deal less likely to have cross-pollination issues with chinese chestnuts, given the likelihood that the "underbrush" would be much more controlled in theses scenarios than in a typical forest?


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## moray (Jan 23, 2008)

The new link worked--good story. I didn't know Ohio was that close to releasing trees.


marcos said:


> So I'm gathering by what you're saying, that sometime in the future my kids or grandkids may indeed see a comeback American Chestnut tree (or a close enough genetic variation) growing in the woods producing nuts just like what my great-grandpa and Bing Crosby knew. But just like what commonly happens with some *oaks*, the pollen mixes in the forest, producing all kinds of wierd variations over time, right?
> 
> Would it be safe to assume that more isolated groups of American Chestnut plantings, maybe at larger sites like municipal parks, or in and around larger campuses and buisiness parks in the future, would be a great deal less likely to have cross-pollination issues with chinese chestnuts, given the likelihood that the "underbrush" would be much more controlled in theses scenarios than in a typical forest?



I think you're right about this. Here in Maine I think Chinese trees or hybrids must be very rare, as I have never seen nor heard of one. When we start releasing trees, they should not degrade from intermixing. Also, there may be other factors in our favor. Perhaps Chinese trees release pollen a week too early or a week too late to affect the release trees. Perhaps Chinese pollen is significantly less efficient at pollinating American trees. Perhaps Chinese trees can't survive very well in our woods, or not at all in some places.

There is another interesting twist to this story related to my surprise at the fact that Ohio is already ready to release hybrids. It is not sufficient merely to reach the stage where you are standing there staring at a 3rd backcross tree that is 15/16 American. One of its parents was full American, and that tree donated no resistance genes. You have two more steps to go. The best 15/16 trees, those showing the most resistance when challenged with the fungus, have to be bred to each other. This is not a back cross. It is analagous to crossing two humans, each with only one gene for blue eyes (so each parent has brown eyes), in the hopes of getting an offspring with blue eyes (both genes for blue eyes). One in 4 offspring, on average should end up with blue eyes. In the case of the chestnut, assuming there are 3 genes for resistance, the situation is much worse. One would expect only 1 in 64 offspring to inherit two copies of all 3 genes for resistance. This is a very low yield, obviously, but those are the trees you need as the foundation for the release program. Creating a breeding orchard from the fully resistant 15/16 trees is the final step. When those trees are put in a breeding orchard by themselves and allowed to freely cross, the resulting nuts should all have full resistance and are ready to release to the wild.

It would be cool if you could find out more about your Ohio trees. Are they really certified release trees, or merely 15/16 hybrids?


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## marcos (Jan 23, 2008)

moray said:


> It would be cool if you could find out more about your Ohio trees. Are they really certified release trees, or merely 15/16 hybrids?



Great info, thanks!

O.K...But you said you're tied in with, or are a member of the Maine chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, right?
You've said you've at least met the chapter's geneticist.

Wouldn't it be simple to ask a key person you know at the Maine chapter of the A.C.F. to talk to Brian McCarthy, or someone else at the Ohio Chapter who would know the answer to that question ?

Or is there maybe some incentivized...*state vs. state competition* involved here!


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## 046 (Jan 23, 2008)

just got off the line with the American chestnut foundation folks. 
seem they are almost ready to introduce resistant trees into the wild. 

they are back crossed, but will be American chestnuts when done. 

when I informed them about the resistant tree in OK. they told me that in every state there's aprox. 10 trees that are resistant. 

there's a stand of aprox. 200 chestnut tree out east that seems to be resistant. they are still trying to find out why this stand was not effected. while trees near by were killed off. 

Dr. Paul Sisco is one of the staff scientist for ACS.


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## moray (Jan 23, 2008)

marcos said:


> Wouldn't it be simple to ask a key person ...who would know the answer to that question ?



Google is quicker yet. The Ohio chapter is quite new, and according to the link below, they are still searching for surviving trees. They certainly do not have an advanced breeding program.

The strip mine trees are hybrids of some kind, not 15/16 release trees.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/0913chestnut.html

As far as I know, Virginia is the state closest to releasing trees. Dr. Fred Hebard is the TACF geneticist, and he mostly works (I believe) at the Meadowview Farm in VA. 

As to whether there are any 100% American trees that are truly blight resistant, that is probably impossible to tell unless you innoculate them with the blight. A tree may grow large and appear resistant only because it has luckily avoided contact with the fungus. If truly resistant trees were known, no one would even think of using Chinese trees as a source of resistance for the recovery program.


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## moray (Sep 21, 2008)

One of the best native chestnuts in Maine is dying. The Embden tree, about 60 feet tall and 14 in. DBH appeared perfectly healthy two years ago, and bore a bumper crop of 1000+ burrs last fall. Sadly, about half the circumference of the base of the tree was affected by blight canker at that time. The picture, taken yesterday, shows the base of the tree, now about 80% destroyed by the blight. There are no burrs on the tree, and no foliage in the top 20 feet of the tree. Sometime early next year the fungus will finish girdling the tree and that will be that.

Near the center of the photo you can see the faint orangish wash caused by the fungal fruiting bodies.






In another recent thread on AS people were speculating about blight resistance in certain native trees. This tree, parent to hundreds of trees around the state, and provider of a most excellent chestnut soup last fall, would certainly have been on the short list of naturally resistant trees. Yet once afflicted with the blight, it succumbed just as easily as any other. Fortunately there are apparently unblighted survivors in the same grove that can continue to provide nuts for the breeding program.


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## 046 (Sep 21, 2008)

how sad!!!

so a 14in DBH chestnut is considered good sized?


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## moray (Sep 22, 2008)

Nowadays, yes, 14 in. is good-sized. The best tree in Maine is 34 in. DBH. In the old days the trees lasted a lot longer and obviously got a whole lot bigger.

Have you found the pollinator for your big tree yet?


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## S Mc (Sep 22, 2008)

moray said:


> Have you found the pollinator for your big tree yet?



The American chestnut is monoecious and therefore, capable of "self-pollination". In Harlow & Harrar's Textbook of Dendrology, 9th Ed, it is stated that the tree is anemophilous (wind-pollinated) and entomophilous (insect-pollinated) or a combination of both. However, Johnson (1988) found that the American species of Castanea are primarily wind pollinated. 

So I am construing from your questioning the existance of a pollinator close by that the incidence of viable pollination increases with multiple trees. Is this correct? (I realize many wind-pollinated species do perform better with multiple pollinators.)

In the breeding orchards you have mentioned, do they take cuttings into a controlled green house for the innoculation? How is that controlled?

Moray, thanks for so much interesting information! Actually to all the informational posts on this subject. Really fascinating. The points raised about the time span necessary to see results is one of the stumbling blocks to tree management. Everyone wants immediate results and trees just simply have a different prospective on what that means. It takes dedication and commitment on a multi-generational basis to pursue answers...and all too often lead us to more questions.

Sylvia


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## 046 (Sep 22, 2008)

hmmmm... more new info..

have always thought american chestnut required a second tree to pollinate. just assumed there was a second chestnut tree closeby. 

fertile nuts to stunted nuts ratio for the mature Tulsa tree is on the order of 20 to 1. 

it survived a nasty ice storm much better than surrounding oaks. seems fruit trees in general are designed to carry much larger loads without breaking. most of the pears and apple trees survived the Tulsa ice storm without major damage.


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## moray (Sep 22, 2008)

S Mc said:


> The American chestnut is monoecious and therefore, capable of "self-pollination"...
> So I am construing from your questioning the existance of a pollinator close by that the incidence of viable pollination increases with multiple trees...
> 
> In the breeding orchards you have mentioned, do they take cuttings into a controlled green house for the innoculation? How is that controlled?...



Sylvia, you are right that the chestnut is monoecious. The male flowers make a spectacular display that can be seen half a mile away. But the tree is not self-fertile (maybe rarely so). There are lone trees in my area that flower profusely every year and litter the ground with burrs in the fall, but all the burrs are full of duds. The dying tree was near several others (50 feet to 200 feet)--they supplied the necessary pollen, and 80 or 90% of the nuts were fertile, the rest being duds.

Pollination in the breeding program is accomplished in two stages. The operator uses some sort of bucket lift to get up into the target tree, then strips a likely branch of all male catkins (which greatly outnumber the female flowers), leaving only the female flowers. Bags are placed over the female flowers, usually 100 per tree and 2 or 3 per branch. A few days to a week later, the crew returns with a vial of pollen from the desired genetic source and individually removes the bags, applies pollen, and reinstalls the bags. A few bags are left on unpollinated flowers as controls. 

In the fall the bags are removed and the burrs collected. If the control bags contain any fertile nuts, the whole experiment is deemed to have been contaminated with local pollen before bagging began, and the harvested nuts will likely end up in a tasty soup. The people in the Maine program have a keen eye for the timing--they seem to know almost to the hour when to bag to avoid local pollen, and when to pollinate before the female flowers lose viability. It's a great project.


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## eljefe (Sep 22, 2008)

*seeds or seedlings*

Hi, I would very much like to obtain either seeds or seedlings. I would plant on an island which might help keep the blight away. Island is protected and will never be developed. It would be great to see these trees come back to forests. Eljefe


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## S Mc (Sep 22, 2008)

Moray, I'm trying to understand this. If the tree is monoecious, then it has male and female flowers. Why isn't it self-fertile? Is the prevailing wind in this area constant enough or severe enough to preclude the pollen staying within the vicinity of the host tree? Otherwise, it should self-pollinate, shouldn't it? If they are self-incompatible, I am curious as to why the dendrology books seem to leave this fact out. Is this a new circumstance due to the blight? Or has this just become evident with the decimation of the vast chestnut forests bringing the necessity of a pollinator in the vicinity to light?

Thank you for the breeding information on the trees. It really is a fascinating and awesome undertaking.

I was also wondering, though, about the innoculation of the blight fungal pathogen to determine resistance. You said that this breeding orchard innoculated trees in an effort to determine resistance. How is this controlled? 

Sylvia


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## S Mc (Sep 22, 2008)

046, your mission should you choose to accept it...

Find out if you have a pollinator in the vicinity of your Tulsa chestnut. (Start walking upwind, using Ninja squirrel techniques...should be no problem.) opcorn: 

I find this fascinating. Because if it is a lone tree AND producing viable nuts AND has stayed healthy, what conclusions might be drawn from this?

Sylvia


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## Musclenut (Sep 22, 2008)

I work for a telephone company and due to the state widening a hwy. I was able to bring home several American Chestnut telephone poles that were suposably in the ground since the 30's and 40's. They still looked almost new. Some day they'll make me a nice fence. Telephone poles in general are hard on a chainsaw but old chestnut poles are real bad.


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## appalachianarbo (Sep 22, 2008)

> Bags are placed over the female flowers, usually 100 per tree and 2 or 3 per branch. A few days to a week later, the crew returns with a vial of pollen from the desired genetic source and individually removes the bags, applies pollen, and reinstalls the bags. A few bags are left on unpollinated flowers as controls.
> 
> In the fall the bags are removed and the burrs collected.



I've done this for the ACF. I climbed the trees though - No lift for me. The biggest was 16" DBH. 

My father in law has a hybrid that's about 15' tall now. It's from the Biltmore Estate's planting (from 2003 or 2004 or so?)


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## moray (Sep 23, 2008)

S Mc said:


> Moray, I'm trying to understand this. If the tree is monoecious, then it has male and female flowers. Why isn't it self-fertile?...
> 
> I was also wondering, though, about the innoculation of the blight fungal pathogen to determine resistance. You said that this breeding orchard innoculated trees in an effort to determine resistance. How is this controlled?



Good questions. I suppose there are two answers to the self-fertile question, one mechanical and the other evolutionary. The evolutionary answer is pretty straightforward: one of the major purported benefits of sexual reproduction--genetic diversity of offspring--is somewhat diminished if a plant pollinates itself. One could speculate that dioecious plants came about because plants with only one flower type absolutely could not pollinate themselves. It is worth noting that, by analogy, animals are almost without exception "dioecious".

I wish I had a list of examples right at hand to illustrate the point, but I believe it is actually quite common that a plant goes to some pains to avoid self pollination. Even in plants with perfect flowers there are often barriers to self pollination. Orchids, for example, represent a huge group whose flowers have a shape that makes self pollination very difficult. The mechanical and chemical means to prevent self pollination could include timing pollen release before the stigmas are ready to receive pollen, chemical markers on the pollen that the stigmas recognize as "self", and so on. Suffice it to say, in the case of American chestnut self pollination is very rare.

To challenge hybrid orchard plants with the blight, a small hole is drilled a half inch or so into the trunk of each tree a couple of feet above the ground. Fungal innoculum is smeared into the hole, and the hole is plugged. A few months later (there is an exact protocol for all this, but I don't know the details) all the challenged trees are inspected and rated from 1 to 5 according to severity of the resulting blight canker. Only the trees with the smallest cankers are kept for breeding the next year. Apparently they will survive long enough to produce pollen, or maybe even nuts, and so the chain remains unbroken. As far as I am aware, the blight is lethal to all hybrids because, at best, they can have only half the Chinese resistance genes.

The pictures below show part of an orchard of 9-yr-old trees, a closer view of a tree showing its size (about 5 inches in diameter), and a closeup showing a sunken blight canker a couple of days after inspection. The arrow points to the site of innoculation. I believe that it was a relatively large canker, indicating the tree had very little resistance and was a candidate to be culled.


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## moray (Sep 23, 2008)

eljefe said:


> Hi, I would very much like to obtain either seeds or seedlings. I would plant on an island which might help keep the blight away. Island is protected and will never be developed. It would be great to see these trees come back to forests. Eljefe



Google TACF. Then find your state chapter, or else find the Virginia chapter. One of those should be happy to sell you some seeds or seedlings. Virginia has the biggest and most advanced recovery program.


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