An American chestnut tree growing next to a steep mountain trail in Nelson County inspires hope as magnificently as a brilliant sunrise on a new day.
Planted 28 years ago, the towering Thompson Tree survives on a 200 million-acre battlefield of sorts stretching from Maine to Florida and from the Piedmont westward into the Ohio Valley. During the first half of the 20th century, an estimated
3.5 billion American chestnut trees - a quarter of the hardwood tree population - withered and died en masse on this vast killing ground.
The once hardy and beautiful trees that would rise up 100 feet or more succumbed to a lethal fungus. The mindless destroyer became known as the chestnut blight, and is believed to have entered this country around 1900 on infected Chinese chestnut trees delivered to a Long Island, N.Y., nursery.
Carried on the air and water, the blight had established a secure foothold by the time its ravaging work was first noticed. Herman Merkel, head forester of the New York Zoological Park, sounded the initial alarm in 1904 when the American chestnut trees in the park started to die.
It was too late to stop the disease, and the devastating impact it had on people and animals is incalculable. By 1930 the blight had reached Virginia, and within a few decades the once regal giants of the forest were all but gone.
"When the chestnut trees in this area started dying out it came as a real shock to people, especially those living in the mountains," said Wayne Bowman, research forester with the Virginia Department of Forestry.
"Everything about the tree was used. The logs built their homes, the bark was used for shingles, they were split to build rail fences. And they ate the nuts, which also represented a cash crop for them.
"The nuts were also an important food source for deer, turkeys, squirrels - everything ate them. The oak tree will produce a big acorn crop maybe once every five years, but the chestnut trees produced a big crop every year."
On a recent morning Bowman walked through a wooded area at the foot of Three Ridges Mountain in Nelson County. Called Lesesne State Forest, the 420 acres was donated to the forestry department in 1969 by Dr. Arthur Valk and his wife to be used for American chestnut tree research.
Since then it has become a major battlefield where foresters, scientists and volunteers continue the effort to resurrect the American chestnut tree. The strategy of attack consists of multifaceted approaches from grafting to crossing American chestnut trees with Chinese chestnut trees that are resistant, though not immune, to the blight.
After nearly four decades of effort, the promise of coming victory can be read in the leaves of the trees.
"This is from a pure Chinese chestnut," Bowman said, holding a leafy bough in his hands. "You can see the leaves are rounded at the base, and you really don't have sharp edges.
"Now this is a pure American chestnut leaf. The leaves are larger, longer and more serrated. Here we have some leaves from a tree that's a fourth American. It's a little different than the pure Chinese, its leaves are a little longer, but it hasn't changed a lot.
"Here we have leaves from a tree that's three-fourth American and they're starting to get longer. These leaves are from a tree that's 7/8th American, and if I saw this growing in the wild I couldn't tell it from a pure American."
At the heart of the crossbreeding project, and what has enabled it to succeed, is a miracle of nature. Although the blight killed almost all the chestnut trees in Virginia and elsewhere, it didn't get them all.
Full Story: http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/nelson_county
/article/new_life_for_the_chestnut/25073/
