It came from China

[Jeff]

I watched this youtube video last night and educated myself about the American Chestnut tree and the tragedy to our eco system when something from China was unleashed upon us.
Living out of the normal range of the Chestnut, growing up, I had not understood what a loss this was to all of America.

[Downstream]

Sad.  Another example of somebody moving forward without knowledge of the impact or maybe not caring since they will make a ton of money in the process.

[barbender]

 The gist of what I watched is true in what happened to the chestnut, but I don't think some of those images are correct. The chestnut did get massive, and the picture of the grove of massive trees is chestnut. But some of those pictures I'm pretty sure are from the West Coast. I've seen the same images presented as chestnuts other places and they've been shown pretty conclusively to be redwoods or othe massive West Coast timber. 

 Along those lines, when it was speaking about the Native relationship with the chestnut, the image presented was of Little Robe, a Cheyenne chief of the plains who had zero to do with the chestnut. It just speaks to the lack of research and accuracy, imo. 

[rusticretreater]

There were massive chestnut trees in the Shenandoah Valley into the early 1800's.  Many of the old houses still around have chestnut logs on stone piers.  Some of them were on the order of 300 years old prior to felling.

[Bruno of NH]

I watched it last month .
I didn't understand how large the trees grew to.

[oldgraysawyer]

There are many stories about them from my family. They came into where I live in 1798 and built cabins for their families and went back to where the rest of the family was staying and packed them all up and moved in. It took them(5 brothers + 1 brother in-law) from 1798 to 1801 to get all 6 cabins built and ready for the others. I watched the video the other day when it popped up in my youtube suggestions. this image is from a sequoia but from the tales the chestnuts were as big.

[Don P]

Michelle is going to a meeting on planting some new crosses this afternoon.

I appreciate the film's intent but have some issues with some of it, its a little on the mythical side. By the time the blight arrived we had pretty much already taken down the eastern forest, and the passenger pigeon, and the bison, all by our lonesome. This article is probably a clearer picture of the tree in its context;
Did American Chestnut Really Dominate the Eastern Forest? - Arnold Arboretum | Arnold Arboretum (harvard.edu)

I grew up in the piedmont of NC, we didn't run into much chestnut at all in old houses, some wormy panelling as that became a post blight fad. Up here in the Blue Ridge, all the time through time. It is not uncommon to find the heavier framing in a house in oak and the infill studding in chestnut. I've been out to look at more "chestnut" cabins that were white oak than you can shake a stick at though, similar to what the article says.  As far as coming from China... remember who was chasing who at that time  . They wanted nothing more than to be left alone. The flow of evolution seems to come from there this way. Someone once told me that bug and plant-wise "They have seen everything we have but we have not seen all they have". That is why we have so many "japonica's" and asian invasives.  I really hope we come up with a resistant big timber sized tree.

[SawyerTed]

My FIL talked about coming back from WWII and cutting all the remaining standing chestnut trees.  We have stumps that still sprout.  They tend to die at no taller than 20' tall.  

A friend called me a few years ago to help him ID a log laying in a hollow next to a very prolific spring.  It was August and the area around the spring was extremely damp.  He had started cutting it with a CSM.

The property owner said the log had laid in the hollow all his life, he was near 80.   He told of his father saying the tree fell when he was a young man.  So as best we could figure, the log laid there well over 100 years.  It was supported at the stump and at the top.   The log was 50' long and 30" diameter at the butt.  It was rock solid.

It turned out to be an incredibly solid American Chestnut log.  He's made a small fortune selling pieces of it.  

[Ron Wenrich]

Here's a pretty good article on the American chestnut.  https://arboretum.harvard.edu/stories/did-american-chestnut-really-dominate-the-eastern-forest/

Some things bothered me about the movie.  One was the coupling of the chestnut with the passenger pigeon and the bison.  I didn't think they had a mutual dependent type of existence.

I remember seeing stumps in the forests that remained about 30-40 yrs after the blight and removal.  Although I'm not in Appalachia, I didn't see vast numbers of stumps or anything to rival the sizes of those in the movie.  The biggest I run across would have been about a 20" tree.  Which leads me to believe that chestnut wasn't as dominant as portrayed.

The chestnut is an intolerant species.  The early forests were mainly climax species of white oak, beech, hemlock and maple.  Places that had some sort of disturbance, like a forest fire, is where the intolerant species takes hold.  They are eventually taken over by the more tolerant species as the tolerants are over topped or die off.  This explains why there weren't a whole lot of chestnuts in the early forests.

But, after slash and burn ag practices and a whole lot of logging, those intolerant species were able to take up more of the forest composition.  Chestnut is a prolific stump spouter, and had a head start over other species.  That is why they were more prominent in the 2nd forest.

My guess is the ones pictured in the movie were probably in coves.  Chestnut requires a moist site, which means they don't do as well on south and west mountain aspects.  From historic records, they were more prominent in the southern part of the range.  That fits the Appalachia part, but was it that prominent?

[SwampDonkey]

What you're experiencing with suckered chestnuts only getting so big and living a much shorter life, is much the same case with aspen up here. Suckered aspen lives a short life. Aspen after a fire grows way bigger and lives longer. I see evidence all around me.  

It's a tragedy a disease foreign to the chestnut, all but wiped it out.

[Don P]

That dieback is simply when the blight hits them. It is when the bark matures and cracks. It is also about the time they sometimes put out nuts for a year or few. 3' stumps here were common, they have mostly left the landscape. I've harvested and sawed a couple of old standing snags but haven't seen one in some years. In my Dad's generation a family friend put himself through school "mining" fallen and buried sound chestnut trees.

Michelle came back from the meeting with a bunch of sprouts. We'll raise a couple and the rest go to the hort class at the HS. Here's a quick google I did to help me understand;

Chestnut blight caused by Cryphonectria parasitica [ 12] attacks Fagaceae, including sweet chestnuts, as a biotic stress factor it causes adverse changes in the plant's transport tissues [ 13, 14 ], secretes toxins and oxalic acid that break down plant cell walls and generate cankers on tree bark [ 15, 16, 17 ].

They will grow these out for 3 years and then take a hole punch and an oxalic acid solution and test leaves from the plants. There will be an app they upload a scan of the sample to and it will tell which trees are more resistant to oxalic acid and those will be grown out for seed to try again. Part of the growing regimen is to promote early nut bearing to turn generations as fast as nature permits. The chinkapin folks have been doing something similar. I doubt we will plant a winner but more than happy to plant some out.

[SwampDonkey]

Disease is what hits suckered aspen here, different disease, same results. And I don't mean one here and there, I mean lots and lots of them die off. None ever reach 40" as do the seed born ones. Very lucky if you see one 20", most are long dead beforehand.

[Oth]

I've got 6 or 7 chestnut stumps that sprout new saplings every year. I'm right on the tip of a large hill known as chestnut hill in yesteryear. Some of them are in very inconvenient places but I can't bring my self to remove them. The house I grew up in had an oak frame but some of the interior wall boards in the attic were chestnut. Made a gate for my wife's garden outta some of those before we were married. 

[Rhodemont]

Several stumps across the road keep pushing up and trying to survive.  They get about 15 to 20 feet tall then get the orange spore spots and cracked bark at knee height.  Some have produced chestnuts just before dying off.  I have some hanging in the shop.

[Ron Wenrich]

The Chestnut Foundation used to go out and harvest nuts from any chestnut trees that have survived the blight.   They used them as a seed source for the breeding program.  I know there was one in someone's backyard in my county.  I think it was planted in the 1920s.  I don't know if they're still continuing with the harvesting, but they do have some seeds and seedlings that have intermediate blight resistance.  I did volunteer work for them a number of years ago.  I might get back into it.  https://tacf.org/

I do remember seeing a couple of chestnuts that made it to the small sawtimber size back when I was marking timber in the '70s-'80s.  We always marked away from them, just to give them a chance.  I remember seeing the saplings that often ended up with cankers.

I also saw the remnants of a big one when I was doing vegetation studies for a utility company in PA.  They had put in a new relay station and put in a power line to it.  They had seen a chestnut about 18-20" dbh and purposely moved the line to avoid its removal.  Funny thing is that when they had the line cut out, the chestnut ended up being cut.  Unfortunately, no one knew how it happened.

There has to be a number of living chestnuts that have a decent degree of blight resistance.  It will take a long time for nature to recover on its own.

[Don P]

One interesting thing from a discussion my wife had with one of the local state foresters (they have fairly extensive trials going on). The blight fungus is airborne. Several soil microorganisms are antagonistic to the blight. He mentioned rubbing dirt on the bark would probably help. I have heard of a thin spray on clay coating being applied, I'm not sure if it was with that intent or just as a barrier, of which there have been many tried.

[Al_Smith]

Historically it appears blights or invasive insects have caused most if not all die backs  .Chestnuts,American elm ,recently ash .It's all blamed on being shipped to north America from over seas in the form of logs  ,lumber or packing crates . I'm beginning to think the next might be hickory as observed through a local die back over the last 10 or so years .
Regarding the ash ,in my observation the little understory saplings were not atacked simpley because they were too small to feed the EAB larva .It could be those will rebound but it will take 100 years if they survive before you will see those 100 footers again .The very last large example I had which was a 100 footer the roots gave way about a year ago and I need to process it into fire wood .That will be a 4 or 5 day ordeal .

[Southside]

I have an Ash that appears to have been completely resistant to the EAB, the bug showed up probably a decade ago here and everything is dead and either on the ground or brittle enough you don't want to try to lay it down without equipment, but I have one tree on the edge of a field that is 14" or so DBH that did just fine and you would never know what happened all around it. 

[Old Greenhorn]

I'd call your state forestry dept and have them look it over. That tree has good bones!

[SwampDonkey]

There's always survivors.   We've had it up here for at least 5 years. I have not seen any ash dying yet. My ash are mostly young trees, one here and there might be 8" diameter. I figure it's mostly young age and good health in their favor. I'm also on lucks side so far.

[Rhodemont]

One interesting thing from a discussion my wife had with one of the local state foresters (they have fairly extensive trials going on). The blight fungus is airborne. Several soil microorganisms are antagonistic to the blight. He mentioned rubbing dirt on the bark would probably help. I have heard of a thin spray on clay coating being applied, I'm not sure if it was with that intent or just as a barrier, of which there have been many tried.

Don,  40 years ago I had more chestnuts trees trying to push up along a stonewall.  I had read in some publications that the soil has some possible protection from the blight.  I piled mounds of surrounding soil up 3 or 4 feet around the stems.  This did not help.  After a couple years the orange spots formed and the bark cracked anyway. 

[Southside]

There's always survivors.   We've had it up here for at least 5 years. I have not seen any ash dying yet. My ash are mostly young trees, one here and there might be 8" diameter. I figure it's mostly young age and good health in their favor. I'm also on lucks side so far.

I hate to say it but that might be about when you start to see the problems develop.  It took several years to realize the infection was here, suddenly you notice the bark slipping and the crown dying back, by then the tree has been infected for years.  Even the 8" ones were stripped here.  Have quite a few that send up suckers for a couple of years, but those all die back eventually. 

[SwampDonkey]

I cut one every once in awhile in trails for firewood and have not seen any beetle galleries or holes yet. But like I said, probably just lucky so far. We also have a lot of ash on fence rows and my cousin has a grove of ash along a small creek that used to be pastured, now Christmas tree farm. They are probably 16" diameter now and not old, open grown mostly. Not dying yet. Again, I suspect luck. Ash is everywhere here, clear cuts tend to grow up in aspen and a lot of ash around here on these old farms. Ash is a prolific seeder around here.

[Don P]

Chestnuts, American elm, recently ash .It's all blamed on being shipped to north America from over seas in the form of logs, lumber or packing crates .

We introduced plant quarantine laws after several introduced pests came over in short order and did major damage. Chestnut blight, gypsy moth was someone wanting to try crossing them with silkworms. White pine blister rust was imported seedlings. They enacted the laws, cleared currants from about 30 million acres of white pine ground, and WWII happened, they lost ground and harvested heavily causing ribes to come back. It was after the first laws but not long when Dutch elm disease came over with a shipment of elm veneer.

It took the chestnut blight about 30 years to really grind in here, wooly adelgid and emerald ash were 10-15 years from when I first started hearing reports. We move stuff around much more now.

[Machinebuilder]

I had looked into letting the American Chestnut Foundation use part of my land to grow trees for their research.

Part of that I was shown a surviving tree at a local church cemetery that they harvested nuts and pollen from.
As i recall it did have some cankers and was about 70' tall.

I did not get involved with the as one of the requirements was I build a 6' high deer proof fence.
I didn't have the need or desire to build a fence like that.

I think part of their research involved Chinese chestnut/American chestnut hybrids