Restoration Chestnuts

American Chestnut - Castanea dentata

As most of you already know, the American Chestnut, one of our magnificent and important native trees,  was literally wiped out after a blight was imported from Asia very early in the 20th century.

Scientists have been trying for years to cross-breed remaining native trees with Asian species in order to come up with a hybrid that will look almost exactly like the old American chestnut ... but have excellent resistance to the blight.

In the winter issue of American Forests magazine, there's an article on recent chestnut research ... and it says there's now the best hope in more than a century to restore these great American trees.

You can read the full article here.

(image: USDA PLANTS Database)

Comments

[Martha]

I wrote a piece about chestnuts. If you would like to read it, here's the link - http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/features/local_story_359145912.html

As a resuslt of the research for the article, I bought 5 chestnut seedlings from the University of Idaho seedling project.

One died the firt summer but 4 are doing well and I have high hopes for a crop some day.