Related threads. Others?<p><i>The demise and potential revival of the American chestnut</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26441593" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26441593</a> - March 2021 (85 comments)<p><i>The demise and potential revival of the American chestnut</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26363660" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26363660</a> - March 2021 (1 comment)<p><i>Blight wiped out the American chestnut. Scientists are close to bringing it back</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21846891" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21846891</a> - Dec 2019 (2 comments)<p><i>American chestnut poised for return to America's forests</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855137" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855137</a> - March 2017 (1 comment)<p><i>American chestnut trees are “technically extinct”</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478910" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478910</a> - Jan 2017 (120 comments)
A forester friend found a sizable American chestnut on a survey and collected a fair number of seeds. My back yard should be an ideal environment for one, so we are planning on trying to germinate some this year.
For those in the SF Bay Area, there is actually a 100-150 year old chestnut orchard in the Santa Cruz mountains that contains American, Asian, and European chestnut trees. The orchard is open every fall to the public and you can go and collect the nuts. It's a fun family activity. Google Skyline Chestnuts. The interesting thing is the presence of American chestnut trees -- the trees don't seem to be affected by chestnut blight.
Anyone who's remotely interested in trees, or literature, should read Richard Powers's fantastic Pulitzer-winning work of fiction, "Overstory: A Novel". I can't recommend it highly enough.
I am growing a batch of Dunstan chestnuts from seeds that I overwintered from <a href="https://chestnutridgeofpikecounty.com/" rel="nofollow">https://chestnutridgeofpikecounty.com/</a>. It's fun to see how much interest the American Chestnut has garnered in the last 20 years. I may have 20-30 seedlings this year and plan to plant them around Evanston, IL. Rogue forestry in the dark of night.
There was one in the city I grew up in, there was no other trees anywhere near it. Once per year chestnuts would be everywhere.<p>But it died before I became a teenager, me and my friends use to love sitting under it. Shows how easily that disease spreads.
I'm the Nevada City area.<p>There are quite a few large chestnut trees here. Last November, in my walks around the city, I gathered buckets or pockets full of the nuts and wound-up with 4-5 jars worth in my refrigerator. I still have half a jar left. They're tasty and easy to cook if you quarter them with a serrated knife and fry like potatoes.<p>Edit: I assume all the trees here were planted or spread from planted trees since this California. With each Chestnut tree group separate, the ability of blight to spread is somewhat limited (but not impossible, still I hope it doesn't).
I know of at least one additional American chestnut tree not listed in this article, in Oak Glen, CA. I was apple picking there and met a wonderful old man from Brittany who made a pilgrimage there every year to pick chestnuts for traditional dishes. It was sad to hear from him that in his youth chestnuts grew in abundance, but today they are few and far between.<p>The chestnuts themselves are tasty and very fun to gather, with their interesting and spiky seed pods.
A bit off-topic and I don't know whether anyone will find it as interesting as I did, but today while reading the source code of npm I stumbled upon a word called "arborist" (which means "tree surgeon" (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arborist" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arborist</a>)), and there's an npm package @npmcli/arborist whose stated purpose is to "inspect and manage node_modules trees".<p>I have neither directly used this package nor have anything to do with arboriculture (what arborists engage in), I just thought that someone chose a very fitting name for an npm package.<p>After seeing this HN post I couldn't not share this finding.
One prevailing thought at the time to fight chestnut blight was to cut existing trees down to prevent the spread.<p>A counter thought is that this action reduced the odds of finding trees that had natural immunity.
If you live in the UK and would like to help protect sweet chestnuts from the same fate, please consider participating in the "Check a Sweet Chestnut" citizen science project run by the RHS and Coventry University: <a href="https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/help-our-research/check-a-sweet-chestnut" rel="nofollow">https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/help-our-research/check-a-swe...</a> .
<i>The species was devastated by chestnut blight, a fungal disease that came from Chinese chestnut trees introduced into North America from East Asia. It is estimated that between 3 and 4 billion American chestnut trees were destroyed in the first half of the 20th century by chestnut blight after the blight's initial discovery in North America in 1904</i><p>That's sad.
Similarly, American ash (white ash) - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraxinus_americana" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraxinus_americana</a><p>I grew up in a neighborhood full of beautiful mature Ash trees. In the past 20 years, almost all of them have died and been cut down due to the emerald ash borer.
I'm from Maryland. I'd often see chestnuts while walking in the woods. They (and their trees) looked just like this. Were these likely another variety? Or was I seeing these? It's weird to think that I normally saw an endangered tree but on the other hand I often saw bald eagles.
There's a GMO chestnut awaiting FDA approval that, with some luck, will be wholly immune to the blight and could prove to be the comeback generations have been waiting for. Unfortunately, this requires a rather long, painful bureaucratic process.<p>(On my phone, otherwise I'd find some links.)
I don't think anyone's mentioned using the wood for furniture and flooring. There's a market for it:<p><a href="https://www.chestnutfloors.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.chestnutfloors.com/</a>
Something weird going on with this tree. I've seen in posted on reddit and hackernews all around the past couple of weeks.<p>Funny how knowledge spreads on the internet.
If this is the same Chestnut Tree that was on our street, it's a very messy tree for an urban environment (massive tree). It would rain baseball sized pods down on cars parked underneath it. It would leave a huge mess on the sidewalks and road every year.