Planting for the Future:Volunteers Help Establish American Chestnut Seed Orchard

摘要

It's not easy to find someone who remembers standing under the shade of a mature American chestnut tree anymore. My 95-year-old grandmother is even a few years too young for that privilege. The fungus causing chestnut blight (Cry-phonectria parasitica) was discovered affecting trees in New York City, in 1904, and by 1930 most of the chestnuts along the eastern seaboard were dead. Because the fungus does not attack the trees' root systems, chestnut saplings continue to sprout adventitiously in southern New Hampshire forests, pushing up over and over again from ancient root stock only to succumb to blight before they are old enough to flower and to produce seed. I still love to find these young trees, even knowing they are doomed. It is a sad realityfor a tree that once numbered in the billions and was prized for its beauty, nutritious nuts, and straight-grained, rot-resistant wood.