The "Perfect" Tree

It’s a sad and familiar tale: more than a century ago, American Chestnuts  - some as high as 100 feet, with trunk diameters of more than ten feet - blanketed the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains and trickled down into the rolling farmland of the Virginia piedmont. In the span of 40 years, the mighty tree had all but vanished, wiped out by an aggressive fungal blight introduced from Asia at the turn of the 20th century.

As it does in many parts of the country, the American Chestnut has special significance here at Oak Spring. Much of the several miles of fencing that criss-cross the Oak Spring and Rokeby properties is constructed from chestnut wood, and our carpenters have even made vases out of rails that have become broken or rotted with the passage of time. Sadly, these weathered rails are all that remain of one of our region’s most important heritage plants.   

Photo by Roger Foley

With other beloved native tree species including ash and hemlock currently standing at a similar risk from invasive pathogens, the tale of the American Chestnut stands as a sobering evidence of the devastation that the loss of a longstanding tree species can bring. But it also shows that, through education and the efforts of concerned scientists and citizens - many of which have been centered right here in Virginia - there might just be hope once again.

“People called it the perfect tree, and it's hard to think of another tree that could be more perfect,” said ecologist Michael Gaige, author of two landscape surveys of the Oak Spring property and leader of our upcoming short course, Ancient, Venerable, and Large Old Trees: Ecology and Conservation.

“To have very light, very rot resistant wood, but still very strong wood, and to produce those really calorie-rich fruits - any sort of way that you put it, the tree just had so much to offer. You couldn't have picked a worse tree to make extinct.”  

As we prepare for our fall 2021 ancient trees course, the tale of the American Chestnut serves as an important reminder of the importance of protecting old trees. Scroll down to read about this remarkable tree, and current efforts to restore it.

A Devastating Loss

Large, old trees play an essential role in forest ecologies as well as in human culture and commerce, and few had more impact than the American Chestnut, which survived for 40 million years before the blight. 

The trees, said Michael, were likely an important food source for the megafauna that roamed North America 10,000 years ago, and continued to provide sustenance and shelter for native wildlife in the Appalachian region, as well as enriching the soil, up until its functional extinction. The fast-growing tree fueled what, by today’s standards, would be a multi-billion dollar timber industry, many parts of the tree were used medicinally by the Cherokee, and the tasty nuts were an important source of income for people living in rural Appalachian communities. Research has also shown that it was likely able to sequester more carbon that other species.

Although considered a forest tree, American Chestnuts also grew in pastures and along fence lines in agricultural areas at the foot of the mountains, said Michael, including the Virginia piedmont.

“These would have been along the countryside for both people and livestock to be eating those fruits,” he said. “I think that aspect of its cultural ecology is an important one, and probably a bit under appreciated.”  

The cabin that used to be located where Oak Spring’s Main Residence is now was constructed from American Chestnut logs. This image was provided by a grandson of Tacy Glascock Fletcher Slater, a previous owner of Oak Spring

At Oak Spring and Rokeby today, the recently renovated School House - one of the oldest buildings on the property - contains several chestnut beams. The tree mostly lives on in the six miles of fencing that criss-cross property. These rails would have been salvaged from dead and dying trees in the Blue Ridge mountains in the 19-teens, said Michael, as part of a final effort to make use of the tree that once made up 25 percent of the hardwood forest.

“And now we're going through it with other species - right now with the ash tree, a less useful tree in many ways, but still quite a tree, and the hemlock is also having this situation with exotic pathogens, so the story continues,” he said. “I'm guessing that we're not done yet, with losing species on account of globalized trade networks.”

Hope for the Future

An American Chestnut growing in the nearby Bull Run mountains. Photo by Vicky Somma via Flickr. While American Chestnut sprouts appear throughout the tree’s range, they are killed by the blight before they are able to grow to impressive sizes.

The American Chestnut blight, possibly introduced from imported nursery stock, was first observed in 1904 on a stand of trees in New York’s Bronx Zoo. It was soon discovered that the blight could kill a mature tree - some which had likely survived for many centuries - in as little as two years. Despite government attempts to save the trees, the American Chestnut was largely gone from its once massive range by the early 1940s.

Efforts to bring back the economically and culturally significant tree began even before it was declared functionally extinct by the USDA in about 1950. Because the blight didn’t technically kill the entire tree - rather, it girdled it, destroying everything above the site of infection, but leaving the root system underground intact - many scientists and conservationists believed that one of the country’s most beloved and historically important trees could be restored to its native range.

Among them was The American Chestnut Foundation. Founded in 1983 by a group of prominent plant scientists, the foundation aimed to breed a blight resistant American Chestnuts by cross-breeding it with the Chinese Chestnut. The national foundation, whose primary research station was in Meadowview, VA, would expand to have state chapters throughout the American chestnut’s range.

“The breeding program got up to the point where we needed genetic diversity. And not only that, diverse being different growing zones so to speak . . . the traditional range of this tree goes all the way from Georgia to Maine,” said Warren Laws, president of the Virginia Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation.

Other organizations, universities, and agencies - including the Virginia Department of Forestry - have their own American Chestnut restoration programs, he continued. “We're not the only ones who are trying to bring this back.”

An American Chestnut in rural Virginia.
Source: US Department of Agriculture, PLANTS Database (Image by John Foley. Provided by National Agricultural Library. Originally from US Forest Service. United States, MD. 1901)

The Virginia chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation has fourteen breeding orchards in Virginia, including locally at Sky Meadow State Park in Fauquier County and Blandy Experimental Farm in neighboring Clarke County - and they all need volunteers, said Warren. In Virginia, volunteers are needed to assist with orchard maintenance, planting, pollinating and hiking in the woods to identify surviving wild trees, which grow from the root systems of trees brought down by the blight.

All chapters of TACF focus on developing blight-resistance hybrids suitable to their particular area, programs which began around 30 years ago at Meadowview Research Farms, along with programs related to restoring the tree to its native range, including biocontrol of the blight. While the breeding project has developed blight-resistant hybrids that bear fruit, the process of breeding the trees and putting them back into the wild is a slow one that requires generations of experimentation, research and observation.

Advances in technology, however, have recently offered other options for the restoration of the American Chestnut. TACF is also currently working with researchers at SUNY University in New York to genetically engineer American Chestnuts using genes from the wheat plant, which enhances resistance to the fungus that causes the blight. The project, led by Dr. Bill Powell, is currently petitioning for the USDA to deregulate the tree and is accepting public comments.

“I'm very optimistic about it, but of course we've got to get government approval to put it out in the wild,” said Warren.

If you’re interested in learning more about the work of the Virginia chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, Warren recommends signing up for their newsletter, The Bur. TACF also offers a seed membership, which is a great option for those living in American chestnut territory who want to help put one of the country’s most significant heritage trees back in the ground.

Learning more about the Conservation and Care of Ancient Trees

While it will be many centuries before the blight-resistant American Chestnuts currently being developed by TACF and other organizations will reach impressive sizes once again, Virginia’s countryside and forests are full of fascinating ancient trees - and learning how to identify and care for them is an important part of ensuring their long-term survival.

American chestnut leaves, nuts and burrs. Photo by Timothy Van Vliet.

The history, culture, ecology, and conservation of ancient trees - particularly, in the Appalachian Mountains and the Virginia Piedmont - will be discussed in depth in our upcoming short course, “Ancient, Venerable, and Large Old Trees: Ecology and Conservation.” Led by Michael and by OSGF President Sir Peter Crane, the residential field course will take place at Oak Spring this October - a particularly beautiful time of year to explore the trees of the Virginia piedmont. Planned field trips include a visit to Shenandoah National Park, which contains one of the premiere old growth forests in Virginia.

“What really makes it really amazing is the level of diversity of ancient trees in there - well over a dozen species of trees growing at or near the maximum age of species,” said Michael. “So it's quite an impressive setting.” 

For more details about the course and to apply, visit our short courses page.

Banner image: Francois Andre Michaux, North American Sylva, (1810-1813)