In 2014, I wrote an article on the demise of the American chestnut tree due to the invasive chestnut blight. I’ve been reading the up-to-the-moment research, and I thought I would give a hopeful update as to where the science and research is leading.

Before the 1950s, the Eastern half of the United States was covered — up to 25% — with acres of American chestnut trees, from Maine down to Georgia, and over to the Mississippi River. These trees grow to 100 feet high, 10 feet in diameter and produce about 10 bushels of sweet chestnuts. These low fat, highly perishable nuts grow in the trees’ canopies, which can reach to over 60 feet wide. These nuts were gathered with shovels in the forests for people to sell and eat. Wildlife as well lived on these nutritious nuts.

The trees’ wood was rot resistant, and lumbered for homes, siding and furniture. I was invited to the American Boy Scouts Camp Manatoc in Peninsula to visit this beautiful facility totally paneled by American chestnut. Oh, how wonderful!

Fast forward to today, and the U.S. Forest Service and The American Chestnut Foundation have partnered up with a quest “to find a genetic variant that survives the chestnut blight”. Together, they have been researching the growth of 64 seedlings in order to develop a distinct new strain of American chestnuts, which will be bred with traditional chestnuts to build up resistance to the blight.

The chestnut blight attacks the trunk of the mature trees, killing tissue above the infected area. As the crown and upper trunk dies, the stump resprouts, then dies, and trees cannot reproduce. These unaffected tissues are grafted onto Chinese chestnuts. The cultivars grown are true American chestnuts.

Other organizations have produced trees that are 94% American chestnut, by breeding them with Chinese chestnuts. In addition, two researchers have bred a blight-resistant tree with gene splicing a wheat gene code enzyme that breaks down oxalic acid, which is produced by the blight and kills the tree. Indeed, “the demise of the American chestnut tree has been called the greatest ecological disaster of the 20th century.”

With the help of many outstanding scientific communities, we may once again see these mighty trees as the national treasure they truly are.