Second chance: Seeing American Chestnuts again

By Thelma Dalmas
Published: September 30, 2008

Those of us who are interested in the natural world often experience a kind of nostalgic regret for those things that are now only a part of history.

I’ve read about the huge flocks of passenger pigeons and the brightly colored Carolina parakeets, once both common in Virginia. By the early 1900s the two species were extinct in the wild.

When I was a little girl, my grandfather used to tell me about gathering chestnuts every fall. His family, who lived in western Bedford County, would head out to the woods surrounding their farm and gather bushels of the nuts. By the time I heard these stories, in the late 1940s, the chestnut was virtually gone.

Chestnut blight — a fungus that attacks the inner bark of the tree and destroys the ability to transport water or nutrients — was accidentally introduced into New York in 1904. Carried by wind-borne spores, the blight quickly spread, and by the 1930s, the southern Appalachians felt the full impact. Known as the “Redwood of the East,” these trees once made up almost 25 percent of the deciduous woodlands in our area. The nuts were an important component of the diet for many animals, and the wood was a valuable source of lumber.

As the blight continued to move, a kind of panic set in, and many of the unaffected trees were logged in the belief that some profit could still be taken before the trees died. This practice virtually guaranteed that no blight resistant individuals would survive. The roots of the gray skeletons often continued to send up sprouts, and this is all we had to remind us of what was once a magnificent tree.

However, I came across a book recently that gave me hope that one day the chestnut might make a recovery. “American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree” by Susan Freinkel describes the ongoing efforts to bring this species back from the brink. Last week, my husband and I took a trip to Lesesne State Forest in Nelson County, the site of a restoration program, and walked through a chestnut forest.

Some of the trees were more than 50 feet tall, and chestnuts littered the ground. I felt almost like I had taken a trip backward through time. I know that I’ll never see a passenger pigeon or Carolina parakeet, but I have walked over a carpet of prickly chestnut burrs. I wish my grandfather were here to see the rebirth of what we thought was lost forever.

News and Notes
The Lynchburg Bird Club will meet at 7 p.m. Oct. 8 in Room 315 of Martin Science Hall at Randolph College. Our guest speaker will be Joe Freeman, a bird club member, who will present a program about a recent trip he and his wife made to the Antarctic. The public is invited.