Know this one? Solved, American Chestnut

[Don P]

[limbrat]

i seen one behind the house last weekend. poor thing looks like it has been running up leaders from the same old stump for years.

[beenthere]

Horse chestnut

[Don P]

How to put this...
You're in the Sapindaceae Family, a horse chestnut is a cousin to the maples
This critter is in the Fagaceae Family, a cousin of oaks and beeches

[tyb525]

American Chestnut.
Once it gets to a certain size, it usually succombes to Cryptonectria parasitica, the Chestnut Blight. Shoots tend to grow from the stumps of older dead trees. Then those shoots die when they get older, they sometimes get old enough to flower..

[Tom]

I thought it was a chinkapin.  :-\

[tyb525]

Close, the leaves are similar, but chinkapin has rounded teeth, and the acorns don't have the fuzz on them.

[Don P]

You got it tyb525 and limbrat ;)
This is a cluster of shoots from an old stump. I had been looking for a blight sample earlier this summer and struck out but remembered the shoot. Drove by last week and shoot fire, the little shoot was covered in burrs.

You are mighty close Tom, chinkapin is castanea pumila, American chestnut is castanea dentata

The horse-chestnut is another family and inedible, causing red blood cell destruction. It was eaten by the native americans but takes multiple boilings and changings of water. I didn't know that it had been eaten by anyone till Beenthere got me googling. Still don't think I'd try that one though.

I remember some nice large blight free nut bearing trees in the UW arboretum several years ago  .

[Tom]

If the sprouts of a blight killed tree produces nuts, are the nuts blighted?  Are the sprouts blighted?  Is the blight systemically contained in the tree/stump or is it living in the invironment waiting for an American Chestnut to raise its head?

[tyb525]

"The fungus is spread by an unknown agent, but it is local in range, so many American Chestnuts survive where there is no other tree within 10 km. Also, there are at least two pathogens which weaken the fungus (hypovirulence) and many trees survive that way.

Surviving chestnut trees are being bred for resistance to the blight, notably by The American Chestnut Foundation, which aims to reintroduce a blight-resistant American chestnut to its original forest range within the early decades of the 21st century.

A small stand of surviving American chestnuts was found in F. D. Roosevelt State Park near Warm Springs, Georgia on April 22, 2006 by Nathan Klaus of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight

[Tom]

I wish our friend, Ivan Bo could have been here to appreciate this thread.  He was so instrumental in helping to bring back the American Chestnut.  The link is to some of his last posts.

[Don P]

I remember those posts fondly. Around here Judge Mathews was working on restoring the chestnut. The nearby state park he willed is dedicated to that research as well.

My feeling is that the blight is in the environment waiting for the smooth juvenile bark to begin to split open. It then gets in the cracks and that's it. That seems to be about the time they get to nut bearing age. That's all observation, one of the foresters might know more. I'm not shipping nuts around for fear of transporting it.

I will tell you all a "rest of the story" that I got back last week. I was showing a teacher this chestnut over the summer. She's the one that became interested in trees and wood while visiting one of our clients. I had sent her home carrying a healthy load of wood samples. You all helped with a bug ID, Tom and Jeff gave her some good webrefs. Well, it turns out the groundskeeper at the school went out and matched up trees to the wood samples and so when she taught the forestry unit he took them out on the grounds and did it up right.

I had neglected to ask the teacher what year she taught and after giving her a pretty in depth couple of days found out she taught first grade. I learned a lesson and laughed when I found that out, figured she could probably field about anything they would throw at her. As it turns out she is going to teach a unit in first grade and the 5th grade teacher was interested so is going to teach another unit at that level. That made my day.

[Tom]

Education is never wasted on anyone.  She might ultimately be the reason that one of her students finds a cure to the chestnut blight.  You certainly didn't waste your time teaching her more than she can use. 

Good Show, Don!!

[tyb525]

I hope I get to see a resistant chestnut in my lifetime.

[Tom]

me too. 

[SwampDonkey]

My cousin is a school teacher. And I never knew about this tale until afterward, reading about it no less. But, she took some kind of forestry excursion with other teachers to Michigan a couple years ago. I don't even know if some of these teachers where getting some exposure or training to teach some primary school courses or what it was about. My first thought was why go to Michigan, but maybe they are doing something different than we are. But, non-the-less it was a surprise. 

[letemgrow]

It looks like a allegheny chinquapin to me, or possibly an american chestnut.  The best way to tell is open the bur, one round nut is a chinquapin.  American chestnuts can have up to three nuts per bur, but chinquapin's will only have one.

[letemgrow]

If the sprouts of a blight killed tree produces nuts, are the nuts blighted?  Are the sprouts blighted?  Is the blight systemically contained in the tree/stump or is it living in the invironment waiting for an American Chestnut to raise its head?

The blight cannot live underground, mud packs will also stifen the effects of blighted patches on trees.  The blight is spread by wind, woodpeckers, squirrels etc. 

[letemgrow]

Here is a pic of a pure american chestnut that I received from the ACCF.  It appears to have some blight resistance.  Time will tell I guess. A couple other american chestnuts that I received were blighted and the cankers progressed fast and they were already sending up new shoots so I cut the blighted ones out.