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The demise and potential revival of the American chestnut
- egberts 6y agoI actually saw the last surviving American chestnut tree in Pennsylvania. It was a lone tree on a hillside for miles around. Those nuts too are still being harvest for biogenetic rework.
- not2b 6y agoLast surviving mature tree. There are vast numbers of saplings all over Appalachia. They die quickly as they mature, but the roots are alive and keep producing new sprouts. As the article points out, in some areas where the coal companies took all the soil away (and therefore the fungus spores), the chestnuts can reach significant size before they get infected and die, but they always will get the blight eventually.
- giantg2 6y agoI sometimes daydream about finding a mature American Chestnut while in the PA woods. I know it'll never happen, but it's fun to think about.
- Maursault 6y agoThis is exciting. The American Chestnut is an amazing tree that once grew with trunks as wide as a car. The article did not mention that once the blight was discovered, there was somewhat of a panic to harvest them, which rather reduced the genetic diversity and ruined the possibility of any natural resistance. The horrendous effect our species has on the diversity of life is incredibly sad, re: Dodos and Carrier Pigeons and likely thousands of other unique species. But I would not cry if the biting mosquito that spreads disease, the bacteria that causes wet dog smell, and Cryphonectria parasitica went extinct never to appear again.
- Scoundreller 6y ago> would not cry if the biting mosquito that spreads disease [...] went extinct Now now, ecological disasters are only permitted if they make a few people temporarily very wealthy. Globally improving everyone and their descendants' life a bit, without even paying for it, is just not okay. They can just constantly fumigate themselves with decreasingly effective chemicals to deal with it.
- zizee 6y agoInterestingly, the disease carrying mosquito is an introduced/invasive species, so eradication in many parts of the world would be repairing the damage that humans caused.
- Swizec 6y ago> But I would not cry if the biting mosquito that spreads disease, the bacteria that causes wet dog smell, and Cryphonectria parasitica went extinct never to appear again. Remember when Mao tried that with evil evil sparrows stealing seeds from the party and caused the greatest famine in human history? Fun times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
- teruakohatu 6y agoNot all mosquito spread disease or bite humans and the ones that do are not a major part of important ecosystems. When DEET was used heavily it didn't collapse any ecosystems. If we eliminate those species, the non-spreaders will fill the niche while eliminating major human suffering. It is not comparable to killing any sparrow sized bird.
- Swizec 6y agoAs far as we know. My argument is that large chaotic systems are often poorly understood by us and we have gotten it wrong many times in the past. I agree that erradicating bad mosquitos feels like a win, but I personally don’t know if there’s any unforeseen effects.
- leipert 6y agoInteresting, because in Europe we have Cameraria ohridella [0] which wreak havoc on horse chestnuts. The moth replicates like crazy and the only recourse is collecting and burning fallen leaves every year. Luckily it looks worse than it is for the trees, they loose their leaves in August, but by then most of a years photosynthesis is done ( just losing like 17%) Anyhow American chestnuts are bad hosts for the moths, so a lot of newly planted chestnuts are the American variant. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse-chestnut_leaf_miner https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse-chestnut_leaf_miner
- Turing_Machine 6y agoHorse chestnuts and chestnuts are different genera, though both have "American" and "European" species. The American horse chestnut is often called the "buckeye". The nuts are vaguely reminiscent of each other, but the horse chestnuts and real chestnuts aren't closely related. This may seem pedantic, but it's sort of important, as real chestnuts are edible (and delicious), while horse chestnuts are toxic to human beings.
- leipert 6y agoYou are right and I should have known better. Didn’t read the former article. In German we make the same distinction, sometimes referring to the real chestnut as Esskastanie (Food/edible-chestnut).
- type_enthusiast 6y agoI hate leaf-miners with a passion. I planted a bunch of citrus trees a while ago, and citrus leaf-miners (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllocnistis_citrella https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllocnistis_citrella) took a great liking to them. They nearly killed a few of the trees – and this is in a backyard with me attending to them pretty much every day. I hate to think of the industrial-scale agricultural damage these little jerks must inflict on commercial citrus orchards. But, they seem to be really hard to combat. Efforts to do so (without blanket use of synthetic pesticides) are few, for whatever reason, and anecdotally of questionable efficacy (I managed to track down some pheremone-driven leaf-miner moth traps, which caught a lot of the buggers but didn't really solve anything). Eventually I figured out that a combination of neem oil and spinosad (Captain Jack's Deadbug Brew) would kill the larval ones, but it didn't kill the eggs and so it would have to be applied every 4 days or so in order to make any progress. I. guess things like that are one of the reasons organic produce is more expensive – some of these things that nature throws at you are hard to combat without using broad-spectrum poison.
- not2b 6y agoUnder a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- samhuk 6y agoI'm intruiged as to your take on how this ties into this.
- samatman 6y agoLongfellow was the great American lyric poet of the 19th century. The chestnut tree in question was an American chestnut, without a doubt. Thought it was a clever choice of quote, myself. Longfellow was fond of trees. One fragment of his poetry I will always remember is "This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks", which my main lesson teacher in elementary school taught us as an example of dactylic hexameter. It is also the first verse of Evangeline, probably his best known poem in his lifetime. Now largely forgotten, which is a pity.
- whyenot 6y agoThere is an old chestnut orchard in the Santa Cruz mountains above Silicon Valley that has the Asian, European AND American chestnut species. American chestnut has the smallest nuts of the three, but they are the sweetest and best tasting.
- fernly 6y agoAre the Asian and European varieties different in other important qualities? The article mentions straight grain and rot resistance, besides trunk size.
- justnoise 6y agoIn terms of the qualities of the wood, the Asian and European Chestnuts are less dense, less strong and has coarser grain structure compared to the American Chestnut. I might be wrong but I've heard the other Chestnuts don't grow nearly as large or as fast.
- whyenot 6y agoHere is some more information about the orchard. http://skylinechestnuts.com/about2.html http://skylinechestnuts.com/about2.html
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- burlesona 6y agoVery interesting article. I wonder about the second and third order effects of genetic engineering, but I would say I’m optimistic about a tree that’s engineered to survive a blight, whereas engineering crops so they can survive being soaked in cancer-causing poison that kills everything else in the field —- and then eating them —- seems far more concerning.
- xxpor 6y agoYou should really read more about how modern herbicides work. Glyphosate disrupts a specific enzyme that only plants use. That's why genetic engineering works so well for resistance to it, you can simply eliminate the vulnerability. The issue isn't that it's cancer causing (there's next to no chance it is, the issues are with the surfactants). The real issue is that weeds are evolving to also have glyphosate resistance, as would be expected when such evolutionary pressure is applied.
- scythe 6y agoThe concerning thing about glyphosate from a biochemistry standpoint is that it's a very small molecule. As any engineer knows, small objects fit in lots of holes. It's also got a phosphonic acid component which is not a normal motif in biology and could (maybe) disrupt the function of any protein that happens to bind to it. The intention of glyphosate is reasonable, but the effect can be different.
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- Isamu 6y agoThis is traditional cross breeding, not genetic engineering per se. Although I have to wonder why one way seems natural and the other not, when they are both guided by human intervention.
- space_fountain 6y ago
- CapitalistCartr 6y agoMy parents grew chestnuts on their farm, when my father was still alive. They were mostly American, with a bit of Chinese for blight resistance, and did pretty well. I've long wondered if regular breeding might have done the trick, if we'd spent the past century trying. Keep back-breeding for more American properties, but resistant, too. For my parents, tent caterpillars were more of a problem.
- bluGill 6y agoWe have been trying, and the trees are available. They aren't as good as the original (whatever that means )
- ZeroFries 6y agoChestnut wood has many desirable properties such as rot resistance which lowers the need for toxic wood preservatives. It makes great roofing shingles.
- scythe 6y agoCuriously, resistance to oxalic acid is also a question in human health. We are protected by the symbiotic bacteria Oxalobacter formigenes, which normally functions to prevent oxalate kidney stones and is lost with some antibiotic treatments. So my first thought was to find a similar microbe that degrades oxalic acid and teach it to live on chestnut trees.
- stevespang 6y agoIndeed, however Oxalobacter formigenes is not widely present in all human biomes, even those without antibiotic therapy. I have attempted to garner the interest of major enzyme corporation (Novozymes, for example) in mass producing the oxalate degrading enzyme through fermentation, but no response.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 6y agoIt's not exactly what you're proposing, but the CHV1 virus attacks C. parasitica and it's being used to combat it in Europe. I'm surprised the article didn't mention it.
- billfor 6y agoI thought the Dunstan Chestnut was an American Chestnut that was blight resistant. I have one growing in my yard for the last 4 years and it's doing fine. https://chestnuthilltreefarm.com/learning-center/dunstan-chestnut-history-2/ https://chestnuthilltreefarm.com/learning-center/dunstan-che...
- Ericson2314 6y agoReading that page, I think the problem is that that hybrid might be insufficiently derived from the American chestnut for wide-scale replanting of it to count as conservation.
- chrisseldo 6y agoThe novel "The Overstory" instilled a greater appreciation for trees, in general, but in particular for the American Chestnut.
- rdiddly 6y agoIf chestnut trees were wiped out by 1940, that means Mel Tormé & Bob Wells, writing The Christmas Song in 1946 ("chestnuts roasting on an open fire"), were already being nostalgic.
- scorpion95 6y agoWho gives a shit about the chestnut?
- runarberg 6y agoThe bight is believed to have come from trees introduced from east Asia. Here in the Pacific North West there are plenty of chestnut trees. Last autumn I picked like 4 or 5 full shopping bags full of edible chestnuts. They were delicious. I’m not sure if it is from American, Chinese or even Japanese chestnuts trees though. It is highly likely that Mel Tormé and Bob Wells were roasting the east Asian chestnuts over the open fire. EDIT: And I just found out that Bob Wells was born in Raymond, Washington. So it is entirely likely that the chestnuts that he picket and roasted in his youth were similar to the once you can pick today in the Pacific North West.
- bhk 6y agoYou may have a different Bob Wells in mind. https://performingsongwriter.com/christmas-song/ https://performingsongwriter.com/christmas-song/ > The “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” image was a memory from Wells’ childhood in Boston, when there’d be vendors on street corners at Christmas, serving up paper cones full of roasted chestnuts.
- 0x53 6y agoI recently bought a house in a wooded area. In the backyard was a large old tree that I could not identify. After much searching I figured out that it was a chestnut tree! The article says they are the "perfect tree", but the chestnuts are incredibly sharp and tough. Very painful to step on.
- odonnellryan 6y agoThere is a chestnut tree in North Bergen NJ. Just right on the street. I should grab some of the chestnuts and try and plant them.
- Jgrubb 6y agoGreen spiny balls of death with nuts inside? That's a Chinese chestnut if so, we have two or three on our property. Deer love them but I'm not a huge fan.
- 0x53 6y agoYes, we get so many deer that hop the fence. It never occurred to me that they were going after the chestnuts though.
- mikesabbagh 6y agoThere is a good chance in 10 years we will look back and ask ourselves why the heck it took us so long to allow the genetically engineered chestnuts. There is a big difference between genetic engineering to remove a species from existence vs reversing a bad thing we did and protect a species from going extinct. Our duty is to protect nature from us, and not not intervening when we destroy it. We did this accidentally by introducing the fungus. It is therefore Our duty to protect the chestnut by any means we have to reverse the damage we did, and restore equilibrium
- libraryatnight 6y agoI was unfamiliar with the chestnut debacle until I read The Overstory - I immediately put the book down and went to read about chestnuts being wiped out in droves.
- chrisweekly 6y agoSame; reading Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers (which deserved its Pulitzer) was a profound experience. Trees are amazing.
- timsally 6y agoI will admit I never expected to open the front page of HN in 2021 and read a comment about someone who had read The Overstory. Richard Powers is the preeminent American novelist of our time. With respect to all his works, HN types will especially enjoy Plowing the Dark and Galatea 2.2. There is no better way to dig deep into the effects of modern technology on society than to read Richard Powers. It is no exaggeration to say that reading Powers fundamentally changed the course of my life. Reading his work is absolutely worth your time.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoThe goal can be accomplished through hybridization and backcrossing, with marker assisted selection. I have a Chinese-American F1 hybrid growing here on my farm that is in its 8th year doing very well. I keep meaning to get some more, since I don't get consistent pollination on it.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoBut the seeds from these hybrid trees will not breed true in the next generation meaning that some of the characteristics of your hybrid will not be in the plants grown from it's seeds.
- julienchastang 6y agoI'm glad to see the Sierra Club on board with the GMO path forward. A couple of interesting links on this topic below. See the second link for how impressively massive these trees were before the blight killed them off. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/magazine/american-chestnut.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/magazine/american-chestnu... https://www.denverpost.com/2012/12/08/volunteers-work-to-revive-almost-extinct-american-chestnut/ https://www.denverpost.com/2012/12/08/volunteers-work-to-rev...
- dghughes 6y agoThe range of the chestnut tree surprises me it's so limited. Almost US only except for southern Ontario. The tree is not southern, not northern not even mid-western it's pretty much a mid-Appalachian tree.
- phkahler 6y agoExcept I think I know where one was growing about 20 years ago. I took a nut home intending to plant it, but forgot about it for years. I wonder if that tree is still there in Wisconsin.
- bluGill 6y agoThere is a Grove of chestnuts in Wisconsin. They are not native and isolated enough that the blight never reached the area so they grow well.
- csstanton 6y agoI worked in a plant pathology lab (Dr. Fulbright) at Michigan State University in 2007-08 which was studying C. parasitica. I would run to the fields on Fridays and collect samples to look at under a microscope. Behind my family’s land in northern Michigan, we have American chestnuts that were one of the few remaining stands in the state. They seemed to have some better luck than the rest, though they never grew too tall. It would be wonderful for the Chinese chestnut to get the spotlight it deserves!
- kgeist 6y agoThe site is blocked in Russia. I wonder what American secrets it holds.
- throwaway98797 6y agoNothing to see here comrade
- zeristor 6y agoSo did this play a part in the demise of the Passenger Pigeon? It seems the pigeons ate the nuts, and the also plummeted in numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_chestnut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_chestnut
- m0llusk 6y agoThere are multiple factors involved with both collapses. Chestnut trees were planted in dense clusters in parks and along streets so their growth intermingled. This extreme unnatural density enabled pathogens to spread. Carrier pigeons were delicious and easy eating. Rampant hunting had already crashed the population at that time.
- skillpass 6y agoI hope similar efforts at genetic modification can save American ash trees, which are being wiped out by the Emerald Ash Borer. In my childhood town in the Midwest my street was lined with massive 80 year old ashes that shaded and sheltered the neighborhood. Most of them have now died and been cut down.