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American chestnut tree in Centreville is the 'holy grail' for conservationists
- paulpauper 4y agoHow can they all die so fast and sudden? Wouldn't we expect a certain % to have some immunity, and then those genes pass on and the population eventually recovers?
- Maursault 4y agoMaybe that might have happened, but panic due to the blight massively increased logging of healthy Chestnuts trees. It wasn't just the blight that caused the ecological disaster; greed and shortsightedness probably played an equal part as well.
- pjscott 4y agoPlant immune systems aren't as adaptive as ours, and the American chestnut had no reason to evolve any immunity to the blight because it wasn't present on the continent until the early 1900s.
- mvidal01 4y agoI read in the book "American Chestnut, The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree" by Susan Freinkel that when the blight was first discovered in the early 1900's scientists thought that cutting down chestnut trees in the east would stop the blight from spreading. Many trees were cut down that might have had some level of resistance to the blight.
- quixoticelixer- 4y agoOr more likely they just didn't have the genetic diversity.
- phkahler 4y agoI still have a nut from a lone tree on my grandparents farm. I'm sure other trees are still out there in various places.
- jseliger 4y agoOther HN discussions of the chestnut blight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26441593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26441593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30333498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30333498
- dendrite9 4y agoThere was a crime pays and botany doesnt podcast 2 weeks ago with an interesting interview with someone from this project. http://www.esf.edu/chestnut/ http://www.esf.edu/chestnut/ The group is mentioned in the first comment of the first link you posted from 2017, so people might be interested in a more recent update. The interviewer is not for everyone but I thought it was pretty good discussion. https://www.spreaker.com/user/16676611/restoring-the-american-chestnut https://www.spreaker.com/user/16676611/restoring-the-america...
- greenonions 4y agoBig fan of crime pays but botany doesn't. I'll need to give that podcast a listen, thanks!
- pseudolus 4y agoEpisode of the podcast "Atlas Obscura" which provides some background on the destruction of the American Chestnut and ongoing efforts to revive the species: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-american-chestnut-foundation https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-american-chest...
- altairprime 4y agoFor the record, if you discover a long-lost extinct species, wait until you’ve collected seeds before you tell the world where you found it.
- goldenkey 4y ago
- culi 4y agoSaw this really amazing video[0] the other day about American Chestnut Foundation's breeding program in Virginia to revive the American chestnut Basically they hybridized it with Chinese/Japanese chestnuts (which are blight resistant). Then they take the offspring, test for blight resistance and rebreed those back with purebred American chestnuts. Then they repeat the process. Take those offspring, select for blight resistance, rebreed with American species, etc After a few generations they created an American chestnut tree that looks almost exactly like the purebred versions but retains the blight resistance of the Japanese and Chinese species Really amazing work [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbrY-J0bpto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbrY-J0bpto
- echelon 4y agoWhy don't they use agrobacterium transfection, gene guns, or molecular techniques to directly transfer the resistance genes over? Do we not know what the genes themselves are? I'm not criticizing their technique! Nor do I think I know better. This is amazing and valuable work, and I'd love to know more.
- ch4s3 4y agoIIRC the breeding program predates those tools.
- systems_glitch 4y agoLow-tech, non flash solution that delivers.
- culi 4y agoGood question. I'd imagine something like blight resistance would probably not be a simple case of a few specific genes we can just switch over. It could also just be technology. This breeding program has been around for 50 years or so and CRISPR only really took off around 2011. In addition, the original CRISPR-Ca9 caused a lot of unintended changes in DNA and it's really critical that the new trees are morphologically equivalent to the original trees in order for the birds, insects, and animals that depended on them to resume their interactions. Newer technologies like CRISPR-Nickase are much more precise but also very recently developed
- tootie 4y agoThis is amazing. My parents liked to tell me that roasted chestnuts used to be a ubiquitous street food in NYC until they disappeared.
- pivo 4y agoWe've still got 'em. They must come from other species of chestnut trees now.
- roflyear 4y agoThere is one in North Bergen, NJ. I won't say where. They can find it themselves!
- mod 4y agoIt's okay, it's very unlikely that it's not a hybrid.
- joecool1029 4y agoI have one that's not a hybrid. It's a stressed tree in blight range (Hunterdon, NJ) but it soldiers on. Last year I got a few dozen chestnuts off of it. Normally I can only get a few. (I also have two seedlings sprouted from chestnuts I gathered a few years back)
- peteradio 4y agoHow'd you get your tree originally? Do you think it has some resistance? How large is it now?
- joecool1029 4y agoSee my other more recent comment for more details. It's old. I'm not so sure it has resistance other than it was likely a strong adult when the blight came, and the blight had an easier time killing trees that were not so massive. Before I made last comment I tried to wrap a measuring tape around but it was only a 36 inch measuring tape and circumference of the two halves coming out of the base are at least another 6 inches after it. Height is harder to measure, maybe 30-40ft, it grows at the edge of the forest with multiflora rosebush around it, some hickory and tulip trees over it in height. Some branches have been cut off over the years and the bark is kinda gnarly. Everytime I walk around here there's some new discovery of something new or old. Today I fished a live rusty female crawfish out of the pool and I'm pretty sure it's one of the first sightings of this invasive in this county. Nothing like looking down and going 'Oh I guess we have pool lobsters now'.
- 4y ago
- zaroth 4y agoIf this tree had a secret to cultivating a resistant strain that would be very awesome. Is there a good app which lets you input your zip code, maybe also sun exposure and soil conditions, how many feet of width and height you have available, and then where it will spit out a list of well-suited tree specimens with some nice pictures of each?
- greenonions 4y agoWhy stop at trees? I imagine you could do an alternate reality app for landscaping that shows you what your landscape "could look like". Including flower beds, ground cover alternatives to grass, etc.
- zaroth 4y agoI’ve wanted such an app for years. Ideally with a slider showing stages of growth, watering schedules, generating optimal planting patterns and figuring out plant counts. Of course one-click ordering wouldn’t hurt, but I like to imagine you would still print out a shopping list and head over to the local nursery.
- mod 4y agoI've thought about finding this, or potentially building it if it doesn't exist. I was thinking for gardens and fruit trees. I'm particularly interested in well-suited plants because I will inevitably ignore them, and I'm hoping they can thrive without me. I'm planting figs this fall.
- lanstin 4y agoFig trees are excellent. My wife has one in her gatden, snd after just a few years ee get so many tasty fruits from a pretty small tree. I live in Bay Area and pretty much it is just water it a bit and every so often cut back weeds.
- lostlogin 4y ago> pretty small tree. Im in New Zealand and made the mistake of planting one. It’s turning into a monster and they grow in every direction, fast. When in SF unnoticed what out Pohutakawa have done over your way and was fairly impressed at their growth.
- bpodgursky 4y ago> There used to be about 4 million American chestnut trees in eastern U.S. forests, until chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) arrived in New York via infected plants and spread rapidly, nearly wiping out the majestic trees Fwiw this is wrong -- it used to be 4 billion.
- tylerrobinson 4y agoYes! This is a remarkable typo that gives a very different impression of the history of the tree. 4 million trees in the whole eastern US would make them uncommon even at their peak, when the truth is that they were everywhere.
- brian_herman 4y agoLife finds a way.
- bcbrown 4y agoThis article makes it sound as if there's no large American Chestnuts, but that's not completely accurate. The largest trees in the US are a pair of trees in Thurston County, WA, that are 80-90' tall with ~10' circumferences: https://d3f9k0n15ckvhe.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021-National-Register-of-Champion-Trees.pdf https://d3f9k0n15ckvhe.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/202...
- tunap 4y agoIIRC, they do grow, blight free in the West. However, anything in the Appalachian range, (this species' native habitat?) dies from blight pretty consistently. Lost 4 billion trees in 40 years. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut#North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut#North_America
- nathancahill 4y agoFantastic short story about the American Chestnut in the book Overstory by Richard Powers.
- sg47 4y agoCame here to say this. The Chestnut tree chapter was my favorite in the book.
- dang 4y agoThe recent Stewart Brand documentary goes into American Chestnuts quite a bit. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11741708/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11741708/
- BooneJS 4y agoThe Seek app by iNaturalist is one possible way for armchair conservationists to catalog the trees on their property.
- bentcorner 4y agoThis app is unexpectedly fun to use. My family uses it like PoGo but with native plants and animals.
- nickspacek 4y agoI like Seek but find I prefer the more "raw", self-titled iNaturalist app itself.
- culi 4y agoIt's great but it just... isn't there yet. It's missing some core features from the desktop website. Seek is a better-made app that strips most of iNaturalist features to basically just make it a species identification app. Not sure if your observations even end up going towards citizen science initiatives like the main app does The team behind iNaturalist is like 6 people (though they're hiring! I wanted to apply but it seems like they mostly need help with DevOps)
- mattegan 4y agoCool to see this here and people talking about it. I volunteered with the American Chestnut Foundation during my summers in high school. Usually spent a few weeks on the Meadowview research farm collecting catkins off trees, “processing” the catkins to bottle the pollen, bagging trees to prevent uncontrolled cross pollination, and pollinating trees by hand. My uncle and I also usually took hikes in NC to try and find remaining trees with pollen in the wild. From what I understand, the pollen from these few remaining living trees is used to help re-introduce regional biodiversity into the backcrossed American/Chinese hybrids. Highly recommend going and helping out on the farm if you can spare a week or two, or joining your state chapter if you’ve got one - or sending your kids!
- joecool1029 4y agoIt's too late this year but would they want me to mail catkins from a chestnut producing survivor up in NJ? I also have chestnuts collected from prior years and 2 seedlings growing from some of the prior collected ones that were planted. The survivor has 2 branches coming out of trunk each roughly 42" in circumference, it is not as tall as the one in the article but it's probably got similar girth. The tree is at least 70 years old, I'll confirm with the landlord whether he planted it or if it survived from before his time (he's been here approx 90 years, and I know one red oak and an eastern red cedar is older than he is). We do have Chinese/Japanese chestnuts on the grounds here that are more prolific and it's likely the seedlings I have are hybrids, but who knows? One interesting thing I noted from the American vs. Chinese/Japanese chestnuts is the chestnut weevil does not appear to infect the nuts.
- Maxion 4y agoFrom the sound of your description, I would get in touch. You can probably find an email by googling.
- wyclif 4y agoI grew up on a farm near Media, Pennsylvania. We had quite a few American Chestnut trees. One of my first childhood memories is picking up the nuts off the grass. I doubt those trees are still there. I should go back sometime and see.
- peteradio 4y agoIs there a theory where this tree came from? Is it presumed blight resistant or just really lucky for its location? The old trees live on in the roots but the young shoots die off, presuming blight resistance, did it evolve asexually?
- sarchertech 4y agoHas anyone heard anything about the Darling 58 genetically modified American Chestnut that is resistant to the blight? Last I heard the USDA was reviewing it for approval to sell.
- JshWright 4y agoStill being reviewed… They have thousands of trees planted, and have had at least three generations of trees in the “wild” (in very controlled plots). There has been a lot of fort going in to introducing more diversity into the Darling 58 variety, with pollen from a wide range of American Chestnut populations being used to make the next generation. Here’s the 2021 update for the program: https://www.esf.edu/chestnut/progress-report/2021.htm https://www.esf.edu/chestnut/progress-report/2021.htm
- redtriumph 4y agoFor a moment, I was wondering why would American conservative movement fixate itself with a tree!!?? (I need to unplug from news cycle)
- helen___keller 4y agoThe article misstates > There used to be about 4 million American chestnut trees in eastern U.S. forests, until chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) arrived […] The number is closer to 4 billion with a B[1] Their range was across eastern North America and I’ve read estimates that they may have been a quarter to a third of the trees in those forests before the blight arrived. 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_chestnut https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_chestnut
- wrycoder 4y agoAs of 23:16 UTC, the article says 4 billion. Thousands of eyes!
- culi 4y agoAstounding. Crazy to think about It also makes me wonder. There was an estimated 30-60 million buffalo before colonialism in the Americas. However, those numbers were probably only possible to reach because of human activity driving out other apex predators and becoming themselves the apex predator. Similar story with paw-paws. Though they're not necessarily being threatened by anything currently, their range is decreasing. It turns out humans were essential for its distribution (likely due to other megafauna going extinct). Another example that comes to mind is the "prairie turnip" which as a staple food of many peoples that lived in the grasslands. Despite harvesting being a destructive process, the action actually ended up helping to spread their seeds. Without human harvest we've again seen a decrease in their range. I can also go on about how essential California cultural burns are for most of the "native" ecology, but I'm sure you get the point Anyways I guess what I'm getting at is: I wonder how much humans played a role in it achieving such a widespread distribution. There was a recent book called Dark Emu about aboriginal Australian's role in the native landscapes. Early colonists often remarked that the place looked like a giant, well-managed park. Well it turns out they actually did play a huge role in purposeful management of it. They even grew grains in massive monocultural fields that were often even larger than modern agricultural plots. Similarly there's been a ton of recent research into Amazonia and looking at it as a "manufactured landscape" because of how important the purposeful management of it by native peoples was to the ecosystem as a whole
- leetrout 4y agoIf this interests you and you want to keep exploring trees and forests check out Tom Wessels: https://youtu.be/zcLQz-oR6sw https://youtu.be/zcLQz-oR6sw
- Xcelerate 4y agoI often wonder how different the Blue Ridge mountains looked 100 years ago, with the American Chestnut and various other trees that different forms of blight have since killed. It’s kind of sad visiting Clingman’s Dome or Mt. Mitchell, where you can see the skeletons of all the dead trees.
- heartbreak 4y agoPretty sure the dead trees on Clingman's Dome are from the woolly adelgid.
- pfdietz 4y agoI was walking through a local bird sanctuary this morning. The various species of woodpeckers are doing very well, because of all the dead and dying ash trees (Emerald Ash Borer.)
- nybsop 4y agoI used to live in a historic property in rural MI built in the 1800s. There was a huge chestnut tree growing on it that was at least 50ft tall and looked like it could've been as old as the house. I don't live near there anymore but I always wondered if it might have been an American chestnut.
- jppope 4y agoWe had one in the town I grew up in... I just checked google maps and sadly it has passed.
- 2bitencryption 4y agoIf this interests you, I highly recommend the novel "Overstory", which was a pulitzer prize winner in the last few years. It's a fictional collection of stories, all linked by trees (it makes sense if you've read it). Beautifully written, and gave me a huge appreciation for trees.
- timst4 4y agoReading the first chapters about the American Chestnut made me cry, and I’m not prone to crying. I had to put the book down for a week, and re-examine some of my beliefs about nature and mankind.
- mastersummoner 4y agoYup, same recommendation. That was my first time even hearing about this massive, landscape shifting chestnut blight; I have no idea how it isn't now commonly known. And it was just a really great story in general. Definitely recommend.
- fhsm 4y agoAt least in some places it is widely (universally?) known. I’m surprised to see so many who don’t known. I took high school biology in a classroom named after it. The Christmas song always got explicitly recognized for the loss it memorialized. Any worry about invasive exotics got a “next blight” rhetorical flourish. Our elementary school thanksgiving pageant included a chestnut character (it was a coveted costume). In the summer of 2020 the blight vs hoof and mouth was the frame in which COVID could be productively discussed. The list goes on… Regardless, as one who knew, great recommendation.
- cmrdporcupine 4y agoNice. I have an F1 hybrid American/Chinese hazelnut in its 9th year on my little hobby farm (southern Ontario). It's done ok, no blight ... yet. It's too far from my other chestnuts (Chinese) to get pollinated to produce nuts tho. I keep meaning to get more trees. It's a nice looking tree.
- jppope 4y agodoes anyone know if there are any american chestnuts with natural immunity (via mutations?) with 4 billion trees it would seem that there would be some. There are HIV immune individuals after all.
- quixoticelixer- 4y agoThere is some effort being put towards that but I don't think they have had any success yet.
- trelane 4y agoAh, yes. this old chestnut.
- joe_the_user 4y agoInterestingly, I just walked out to a large chestnut tree on Spring Street by my place in Nevada City, CA and measured it's circumference - I got 127 inches, roughly - getting the tape measure around it was a bit challenging. It might be 40-50 feet tall but there is another much taller with less diameter down the hill from it (tree mentioned in article is 50 ft tree, 35 inch diameter, pretty average for here). There are many chestnut trees in the town, planted in the gold rush days, I believe. last fall, I gathered enough nuts walk around town to supplement my diet for a few months. The nuts haven't started falling this year. Of course, these tree survived the blight because they're well outside the range of the Eastern Chestnut. But still, if someone wants to see chestnut trees, they're here and probably in a lot of places where they were planted outside their range.
- quixoticelixer- 4y agoYou can get non american chestnut trees all throughout the united states. It's only the american one has the disease problem
- joe_the_user 4y agoAnd you can find American chestnut trees scattered around the West Coast. Here's a story about one in Oregon. https://acf.org/our-community/news/passing-of-an-iconic-american-chestnut-tree/ https://acf.org/our-community/news/passing-of-an-iconic-amer...
- cnees 4y agoThe "decline cookies" modal can't be closed. >:(
- billfor 4y agoEvery year around this time we seem to get somebody posting Chestnut tree articles that imply that it's impossible to grow an American chestnut tree or that somehow American chestnuts are rare. My Dunstan Chestnut tree is doing tremendously well after 5 years, and it has a circumference of more than a foot. They even sell them in Walmart now. What am I missing? Here is the link if you need one:https://chestnuthilloutdoors.com/learning-center/dunstan-chestnut/ https://chestnuthilloutdoors.com/learning-center/dunstan-che... They are very easy to grow.
- greenonions 4y agoNot certain, but that Dunstan is likely a hybrid species of American with Chinese chestnut for blight resistance. The genetically pure American Chestnut tree was nearly eliminated by this blight. So backcrossed hybrids and genetically modified varieties of the American Chestnut are exciting, because there's a hope they could return to their former glory in the ecosystem. This particular tree is a large specimen of genetically pure American Chestnut, growing in the east coast region as well, so a great find for conservation. In all, hybrids may be great for individuals, but this movement intends to be more selective for restoration purposes.
- billfor 4y agoI agree with you and know that the Dunstan is "debatable" to its origin. imho it's American, going by https://acf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/leafcard.pdf https://acf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/leafcard.pdf. I know I have a chestnut tree. I know it has lots of teeth and no hair. My point is more a point of having periodic postings about Chestnut trees. I think once every 5 years would be enough on the same exact subject. It has been a trend every year. OK so more people are just discovering the issue every year I guess.
- quixoticelixer- 4y agoIt wouldn't be a pure chinese chestnut it would be a partial hybrid. someone such as yourself would not easily be able to tell