American Chestnut by Susan Freinkel: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree

Chestnut tree enthusiasts historically expect to find their favorite woody plant (Castanea dentata) growing sturdily alongside oaks (Quercus spp). Both trees flourish as air-purifiers, soil-strengtheners, and water-stabilizers in:

• releasing photosynthetic oxygen in wooded atmospheres;
• replenishing alkaloid- and amino acid-facilitating tannins in wooded soils and waters; and
• restoring filtered-light balances by shooting for the sky whenever forest and woodland canopies open or thin.

And yet biological ironies give the two ancient arboreal and sylvan genera, so alike in Shakespearean dignity (paraphrasing Romeo and Juliet, Prologue, line 1), unlike roles in food chain and web interactions with Cryphonectria parasitica.

American chestnuts and chinquapins (Castanea pumila) have no resistance whereas oaks serve as unsusceptible carriers of the above-mentioned devastating fungus. 

It is unfortunate that the nineteenth century’s related tragedy left nature-lovers unalerted to the twentieth century’s tragic possibilities. Highland and lowland locations historically join to sustain altitude-specific American chestnut populations in:

• Alabama, Arkansas;
• Connecticut;
• Delaware;
• Georgia;
• Illinois, Indiana;
• Kentucky;
• Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri;
• New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina;
• Ohio, Ontario;
• Pennsylvania;
• Rhode Island;
• South Carolina;
• Tennessee;
• Vermont, Virginia; and
• West Virginia.

They knit the reactions of two of the United States of America’s greatest ecology-minded presidents, with Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) bemoaning the highland chestnut’s mass-extinction by ink disease (Phytophthora cinnamomi) and Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) deploring the lowland chestnut’s near-extinction by fungus-inflicted blight. 

More than a century after the blight’s introduction through the New York Zoological Garden’s (now the Bronx Zoo) Japanese chestnut (Castanea crenata) imports of 1904, updates frequently mention American chestnuts as rarities from:

• crossing American and Chinese chestnuts (Castanea mollissima) to backcross three generations with American chestnuts and intercross two, per Charles Burnham (January 13, 1904 - April 19, 1995);
• crossing hypovirulent American chestnuts, per Gary Griffin and Fred Hebard; and
• surviving blight as short-lived, under-sized sprouts.

Their vigilance nevertheless nudges American chestnuts toward sustainability through committed educational, financial, and scientific activism.

Europe’s experience from the 1930s onward offers additional hope in France’s, Italy’s, and Portugal’s chestnut (Castanea sativa) survival through anti-blight, virus-induced immunity known as hypovirulence. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

New World avian native Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) favored chestnuts in their diet and sheltered in American Chestnuts.
Martha, last-known passenger pigeon, died at Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914; her taxidermied body currently is on display through September 2015 via Once There Were Billions exhibit at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
National Museum of Natural History, National Mall, Washington DC: Ph0705, CC BY SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martha,_the_last_Passenger_Pigeon._Natural_History_Museum,_June,_2015._Digital_photo,_cropped_and_brightened.jpg

The altitude-specific range of the American Chestnut (Castanea dentata) reveals the New World native's affinity for the Appalachian Mountains of eastern North America.
Elbert L. Little Jr., Atlas of United States trees, volume 4 (1977), Map 27-NE: USGS Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castanea_dentata_range_map_2.png; Not in copyright, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42043928

1943 photo of dead American Chestnut; death was caused by chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica)
"chestnut blight or canker (Cryphonectria parasitica) (Murrill) M.E. Barr": USDA Forest Service - Northeastern Area Archive, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images @ https://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1396146; Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cryphonectria_parasitica_trees_dead.jpg

American Chestnuts were treasured both as backdrops and as mainstays for social activities from colonial times through the 19th century.
"Gathering Chestnuts"; engraving of scene at Philadelphia's Fairmount Park by James W. Lauderbach (1830-1898)
Art Journal, New Series, Vol. 4 (1878), p. 2

26th US President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt chops a fallen tree at Sagamore (Algonquin: "Chieftain") Hill, his beloved estate that served as Summer White House during his presidency (September 14, 1901 – March 4, 1909).
In 1910, after leaving the presidency, Theodore Roosevelt dropped his captivating, ebullient demeanor as he sadly chopped American Chestnuts stricken by the blight at Sagamore.
Sagamore Hill, Cove Neck, North Shore of Long Island, New York; ca. September 11, 1905: No known restrictions on publication, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division @ https://www.loc.gov/item/2009631368/

America poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807–March 24, 1882) immortalized American Chestnut's iconic role in US cultural history via opening lines of The Village Blacksmith (1840): "Under a spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands".
1840 sketch by H.W. Longfellow of the American Chestnut on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which he memorialized in his poem; when the tree was cut down, the poet was gifted with a chair made from its wood.
Longfellow's Life and Legacy by NPS Longfellow National Historic Site, p. 22: Public Domain, via National Park Service @ https://www.nps.gov/long/learn/education/upload/Longfellow-s-Life-Legacy.pdf

Freinkel, Susan. 2008. American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree. Berkley, CA, U.S.A.; Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.; and London, England, U.K.: University of California Press.