16 ms·
America lost the chestnut, its "perfect tree"
- digitalsushi 3y agoThe Chestnut, the Elm, the Ash. I've lost much of my backyard since 2010 to Emerald Ash Borer. A listful view of industrial warehouses is my daily reminder that change is ever present and unavoidable.
- chromatin 3y agoWe're having to take down our last surviving Ash tree this winter. I'll surely shed a tear. It will live on in some furniture I've asked a local craftsman to make
- ghaff 3y agoI lost a huge ash out by the road about 10 years back. The only saving graces were: - It was on the road and the town took it down at no charge. - With that tree gone, the strip of my front field I was letting grow out grew much more and shields me a lot better from the road than I was before.
- heads 3y agoIn a lot of parts of the countryside that I love, the ash trees have completely obscured all the best views over the past 30 years. It feels awful to say but I can’t wait for ash-die-back to wipe out this generation. We’ll be glad for the timber to use as fuel too, of course.
- nemo44x 3y agoHow much is that going to cost? You need to get the tree hauled to a mill if one is close by and cut into lumber that needs to be sorted through to select pieces that are furniture grade and then sent to a craftsman to actually make it. Sounds expensive! Honestly be grateful it’s gone. They’re crappy trees that are dangerous to have near property and people.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LoFiSamurai 3y agoGreat for guitars though!
- AlbertCory 3y agoOh noes. I have what I thought was called a Rayford Ash in my yard, on the advice of a tree specialist from the local nursery. But apparently I've been misspelling it? https://www.moonvalleynurseries.com/raywood-ash https://www.moonvalleynurseries.com/raywood-ash
- Solvency 3y agoStill have a big mature ash tree in my backyard. SoCal. Often wonder how safe it is during Santa Ana wind events, as quite a few limbs are over my roof. It's so stiff compared to other trees.
- nemo44x 3y agoThe problem with ash trees is they fall apart easily. Limbs and branches are brittle and fall down frequently. So they’re dangerous trees. Especially once emerald ash bore takes root. Ashes are not very good trees to keep on a property with people and structures. If you notice lots of debris it might be worth cutting it down.
- 7thaccount 3y agoI'm growing a Princeton elm in my front yard that's supposedly resistant to Dutch elm disease. It was a 6 foot twig a year ago, but a single growing season had it shoot up to what must be 12 feet or more with it quadrupling in thickness. Hopefully in 5 years it will be providing nice shade. They're trying to do the same with the chestnut in finding a suitable hybrid. It's such a shame that we've lost so many of our best trees.
- jpalawaga 3y agoIndeed. New York’s Central Park historically has incorporated a lot of the American Elm. If you look the park however (particularly among the mall/promenade), many of the trees have undergone severe trimming to try and manage the effects of the elm borer and the diseases they spread (particularly Dutch elm disease). It’s pretty unfortunate.
- philips 3y agohttps://archive.is/jf7gg https://archive.is/jf7gg
- 1-6 3y agoAhh the Chestnut, you can sit in a chestnut home roasting chestnuts on an an open fire burning on Chestnut wood. It reminds me of the old saying, the axe with the wooden handle was welcomed in the forest because it convinced all the trees that it was one of them.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoOr leave it alone, put on a sweater, and build using superadobe.
- stephenr 3y agoThat's nothing. You could sit in a bamboo hut wearing clothes made from bamboo, sitting on bamboo furniture, using bamboo chopsticks to eat bamboo out of bamboo bowls.
- blamestross 3y agoAnd still have a problem with having too much bamboo growing outside...
- stephenr 3y agoI guess it depends on the specific type. I'd rather have to remove a bamboo clump than a Thai banana clump (I've done both).
- tmoertel 3y agoPlease share this story :-)
- stephenr 3y agoIt's not much of a story - banana plants are ridiculously resilient; so long as it hasn't flowered yet, you can cut off the entire "trunk" and it will have started shooting the new leaves from the stump within a day. This resilience applies to the part below ground too, and they're full of water, so it's a bit like trying to dig watermelons out of the ground, but if inevitably split one while digging, and you miss a bit it's just going to grow again, and if you take too long between bouts vs the plant (as with bamboo it's unlikely to be a 1-day affair for a reasonable size clump), some of the bits you cut will have broken down and started to rot, so the ground will be soggy and smell horrible.
- xKingfisher 3y agoThe issues with the Darling 58 project had some good discussion here two weeks ago[0]. Tangentially: A distillery in Los Angeles, The Obscure, is making a rye whisky aged in American Chestnut barrels, with some of the proceeds going to the American Chestnut Foundation. It's quite good. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38573765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38573765
- colineartheta 3y agohttps://shop.theobscure.com/products/rites-of-fall-rye-american-chestnut https://shop.theobscure.com/products/rites-of-fall-rye-ameri... For those wondering.
- selimthegrim 3y agoAlso written up in WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/24/chestnut-tree-genetic-engineering-mistake/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/2...
- abnry 3y ago"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire Jack Frost nipping at your nose." I was always struck how nobody roasts chestnuts anymore. Then I learned how some forests in the US had 25% chestnut trees and that blight killed almost all of them. What a fascinating thing that chestnuts were as common as acorns for our grandparents and great-grandparents but are almost non-existent for us.
- ponector 3y agoStreet vendors with roasted chestnuts are common all over Europe, especially at Christmas markets
- o0-0o 3y agoThose are a different type of Asian / Chinese chestnut. Smaller, less flavorful etc etc.
- hinkley 3y agoThose shells are no joke either.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoWhen I collect the nuts from around my property even leather mittens don't work. The spikes on them (both Chinese and American) are intense. I don't know how the squirrels can handle it, but they do (though they go after them after the nut has fully open and fallen to the ground. I imagine the spikes are the trees way of discouraging the rodents from taking them until they're fully ripe and fertile)
- saiya-jin 3y agoWhat the heck you write about, back home we have chestnut trees being up to 500 years old (thats the local record setter in one tiny eastern european country). No chinese products around, not sure if you actually have any real experience of stuff you comment on.
- code51 3y agoWe're losing chestnut trees in Turkey fast as well. Causes: - Phytophthora cambivora (ink disease) - also by: P. cinnamomi, P. plurivora and P. cryptogea - Cryphonectria parasitica (chestnut blight) - gall wasp (Dryocosmus kuriphilus) In Kastamonu and Sinop, modest success reported against blight in treated areas but I don't think the spread is easy to contain. Need to note, blight suspected to have set foot in Turkey in 70s, started to become significant in 90s and now we're losing most. Chestnut has suddenly become hard to reach this year by additional effect of Gall wasp.
- octopoc 3y ago> In the first half of the 20th century, a fungal disease called blight, inadvertently imported from Asia on trade ships, wiped out nearly all of the trees. Global trade is destroying biodiversity across the entire planet. Most of us don't even realize all the ways in which our lives are made poorer by decreased biodiversity, which is why these kinds of articles are so good. But we're all acutely aware of not having the latest gadget. I wish more environmentalists talked about this.
- THENATHE 3y agoIt is wild to me how it seems like every blight or environmental disease or pest I hear about comes from Asia, Chestnut blight, Bark beetles, wildly invasive tree species where I live, carp, Burmese Pythons, that orange disease like 10 years ago, COVID, bird flu, etc. Not making any kind of statement really, just that the only type of invasive species I know of from NOT Asia is climbing ivy
- nilamo 3y agoI wonder how much of that is due to the climate of the area, vs messaging (maybe when it's not from Asia, an origin is not mentioned?)
- wonnage 3y agoKind of like how Spanish flu originated in the US
- VBprogrammer 3y agoThere is an aphid which attacks grape vines that originated in North America. It's the reason that much of the European wine varieties has to be grafted onto American root to survive.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThis is a great, interesting example. From the Wikipedia page on Phylloxera: > In France alone, total wine production fell from 84.5 million hectolitres in 1875 to only 23.4 million hectolitres in 1889. Some estimates hold that between two-thirds and nine-tenths of all European vineyards were destroyed.
- francisofascii 3y ago> An estimated 430 million of the trees can still be found in the forests of the American East. But more than 80 percent of these trees never grow past an inch or so in diameter. It sounds so solvable. It must be hard to keep the wind-borne fungus spores from spreading. Guessing this fungus is everywhere.
- lambdasquirrel 3y agoMaybe one day we can have a CRISPR solution that’ll bring them back?
- mplanchard 3y agoThere are efforts to bring them back! Consider looking for local ones in your area and trying to support them. For example: https://www.sevendaysvt.com/food-drink/tree-farmer-buzz-ferver-aims-to-restore-the-american-chestnut-in-vermont-and-in-your-kitchen-39234863 https://www.sevendaysvt.com/food-drink/tree-farmer-buzz-ferv...
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y agoOh wait is that the reason I can never find chestnuts here in Canada in grocery stores?
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoNo, that's because of consumer preferences. You can't find durian in your store either but not because durian is dying out. In stores in the US, chestnuts always pop up around Thanksgiving or Christmas and are absent the rest of the year.
- randomdata 3y agoConsumer preference around food is largely steeped in tradition – i.e. people generally eat what they grew up eating. It is quite possible that a tradition was lost over the generations due to the species decline. In other words, the grocery store might be full of them today if they had remained abundant. That said, chestnut trees were only ever common in the depths of Southern Ontario. And a quick search suggests that some grocery stores in that region do carry chestnuts, so it seems the tradition has remained alive to some degree.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoActually, consumer preferences around food is based on marketing and availability. Most of the food people eat today changed after WW2, due to changes in the food distribution chain, and the forces of advertising. We don't eat much of what we did 100 years ago. People today buy what's in the grocery store, and what's in the grocery store is there based on what sells, which is based on what a given industry has convinced us to buy and what can be shipped to us for cheap without going bad. Some foods are a local specialty or tradition, but most are less than a century old. It's equally likely that the chestnut's availability in Southern Ontario is merely a byproduct of being easy to store and ship a nut all over the Americas. Grocery store owners may offer it merely because they want to provide a variety of nuts, with almost nobody buying them. Grocery stores often stock items that don't make them any money and are rarely bought, because it contributes to the consumer interest in supermarkets that "have everything", even if consumers only typically purchase 5% of the selection in the store.
- norir 3y agoThe Understory by Richard Powers is a beautiful novel that tells a part of the story of the chestnut tree and certainly deepened my appreciation for it.
- zdyn5 3y agoI believe it’s the Overstory?
- mhb 3y agoYes, The Overstory. The writing is great and Powers seems to have done a tremendous amount of beautifully presented background research (none of which he wants to leave out). But, somewhere in the middle, the book's focus shifts from its interesting characters to a strident narrative about our impending doom.
- purplerabbit 3y agoMy review of Richard Powers: reading him is like reading a Yale-educated version of Nicholas Sparks.
- dang 3y agoRelated: TACF is no longer supporting development of D58 American chestnut trees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38573765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38573765 - Dec 2023 (58 comments) The American chestnut tree is coming back. Who is it for? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576771 - Sept 2023 (4 comments) American chestnut tree in Centreville is the 'holy grail' for conservationists - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32621570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32621570 - Aug 2022 (155 comments) American chestnut - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30333498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30333498 - Feb 2022 (73 comments) The demise and potential revival of the American chestnut - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26441593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26441593 - March 2021 (85 comments) The demise and potential revival of the American chestnut - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26363660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26363660 - March 2021 (1 comment) Blight wiped out the American chestnut. Scientists are close to bringing it back - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21846891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21846891 - Dec 2019 (2 comments) American chestnut poised for return to America's forests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855137 - March 2017 (1 comment) American chestnut trees are “technically extinct” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478910 - Jan 2017 (120 comments)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]