American Chestnuts

[ctlbaron]

Do any of you have any American chestnut trees on your place that you know of? We have an appearent comeback of the American chestnut here in Tennessee. They appear to be blight resistant now. I understand they are available for planting from the university of Tennessee. There are a few farms reporting some small trees on their farms. Just wondered if anyone had found any on your places.

 

[skyeagle]

Gess i'm going contac U of T to see if i can get some trees
been looking for them Chestnut trees. Would like to put in
about 100 to start.

 

[J. T.]

I've only seen pictures of them. From what I've read, they sprout up from old stumps and live about 7 years before the blight gets them. There is an effort to hybridize the Chinese and the American to create a blight resistant strain.

 

[Crowderfarms]

I've only seen pictures of them. From what I've read, they sprout up from old stumps and live about 7 years before the blight gets them. There is an effort to hybridize the Chinese and the American to create a blight resistant strain.

The real Chestnuts have been gone for so long in this area, that there's not even a stump left that I know of.

 

[Beefy]

I've only seen pictures of them. From what I've read, they sprout up from old stumps and live about 7 years before the blight gets them. There is an effort to hybridize the Chinese and the American to create a blight resistant strain.

this is how the chestnut in my yard does. what year did the blight begin killing them? this tree was more than likely planted when the homesite was established in the 1890s.

 

[Crowderfarms]

I've only seen pictures of them. From what I've read, they sprout up from old stumps and live about 7 years before the blight gets them. There is an effort to hybridize the Chinese and the American to create a blight resistant strain.

this is how the chestnut in my yard does. what year did the blight begin killing them? this tree was more than likely planted when the homesite was established in the 1890s.

The blight killed off all the Chestnuts here in the early 1900's.A lot of the local economy here was supported by Chestnuts, as they made ink out of them. Sure would be nice to see a blight resistant comeback of those trees.

 

[Beefy]

mine is a little over 6 foot and really bushy. i'll have to get my dendrology books from college out...

 

[sidney411]

I don't think I've ever seena chestnut tree, guess their not around here. What is blight?

 

[cypressfarms]

Yep,

The real American chesnut can and will sprout up but they rarely make it over 10 years old before dying from the blight.

Scientists are trying to cross Chinese varities, but have had limited success.

This is one woodworker who would like to see it make a comback. Beautiful wood to work with.

American Elm will soon follow chestnut, and is quickly on the path to extinction

 

[ctlbaron]

According to the American chestnut foundation website they are the real thing. You can look up a local chapter in your state and see if any are known to be growing in your area. There are some fairly large tree photos on the Tennessee website. I can remember eating chestnuts when I was a kid so I know there were still a few trees bearing in the 60's. There are comparative photos of Chinese chestnuts to American chestnuts on the web. There are green burrs in the comparison. Do any of you have any Paw paw trees?

 

[Caustic Burno]

Texas A&M was raising a blight resistant chiquakpin(sp) which is in the chestnut family they did have at one time trees you could order from ther Indian Mound Nursery at Alto Texas.

http://tfsstore.tamu.edu/onlinestore/

 

[Bullbuyer]

We saw a few paw paw trees last year along a fence row on some pasture we leased. I understand you can actually order Paw Paw trees from Burpee's catalog now - haven't seen a catalog in years.
Actually, I didn't think very many people even knew what paw paws were.

 

[HOSS]

There used to be hundreds of chestnut trees on my grandfathers farm but he said they all died off before WW2. My uncle who is 81 years old remembers picking them up by the truck load before he went off to fight in Europe and returning home to find them all being wiped out by blight.

 

[BAGTIC]

There are already several species and hybrids of blight immune chestnuts available incliding some that make timber size trees. Unfortunately everyone is fixated on bringing back the American Chestnut.

If we had started planting immune varieties when the disease cropped up a century ago we could have forests of chestnut timber today.

The best is the enemy of the good (-enough).