A Great Loss!

[kerbec]

Rusty you should report any flowering trees to the NJ contact of the American chestnut society. Google it. I know of hundreds of stumps still producing saplings but not one has ever lived long enough to flower. This is in Middlesex county.

[JerseyJaysTaxidermy]

Sad

 

http://www.jerseyjaystaxidermy.com

[Rusty]

Rusty you should report any flowering trees to the NJ contact of the American chestnut society. Google it. I know of hundreds of stumps still producing saplings but not one has ever lived long enough to flower. This is in Middlesex county.

 

 

Thanks for the info, I'll keep an eye out for them.  I remember seeing a pretty good sized tree with nuts in High Point or Stokes but I can't remember exactly where.   

[stratocaster]

If you spend any time outdoors this should be interesting to you!

 

The blight was caused by the Asian bark fungus "accidently" introduced.  What good things come from Asia?  Asian longhorned beetle, Asian carp, grass carp,snakehead, silver carp, bighead carp.  

[Rusty]

 Asian longhorned beetle, Asian carp, grass carp,snakehead, silver carp, bighead carp.  

 

Japanese barberry, Oriental bittersweet, Japanese stiltgrass, Japanese knotweed, Japanese honeysuckle .  .  .  .      

[Kype]

Japanese barberry, Oriental bittersweet, Japanese stiltgrass, Japanese knotweed, Japanese honeysuckle .  .  .  .      

 

horrible driving

[stratocaster]

Japanese barberry, Oriental bittersweet, Japanese stiltgrass, Japanese knotweed, Japanese honeysuckle .  .  .  .      

I wonder how long the list is of invasive crap from Asia....imagine how awesome it would have been to be in the fall woods with those trees around you and chesnuts knocking into your head!  What a blessing it would have been to just see a majestic tree like that.  A great damn loss.....

[gregtpal]

Pretty sure they have a project going to collect nuts from surviving trees to breed the resistant ones

[stratocaster]

Pretty sure they have a project going to collect nuts from surviving trees to breed the resistant ones

It's going to take a monumental effort to re-colonize just a portion of one state with disease resistant trees.  We can be sure that global warming didn't kill these trees, some guy from the Bronx Zoo brought in chesnut trees from Asia that carried the fungus in the bark and that was the beginning of the end.  

[Rusty]

It's going to take a monumental effort to re-colonize just a portion of one state with disease resistant trees.  

 

Fortunately that effort is well under way.  

 

https://www.acf.org/

[Rusty]

I just took a short stroll in the snow, within 200 yards of our house I counted over a dozen sprouting chestnut stumps.

 

 

 

 

[tcook8296]

Very cool, we planted the Dunstan chestnuts on Sparta Mt WMA a few years back.  They are doing well.   

I planted a few Dunstans myself in Illinois and New Jersey

[Rusty]

I planted a few Dunstans myself in Illinois and New Jersey

 

Nice, how long ago did you plant them and how are they doing?  

[tcook8296]

Nice, how long ago did you plant them and how are they doing?

Not as good as I would like but they are surviving. I grew them from seed.

Any one that would like to grow them from seed you can buy them here http://chestnutridgeofpikecounty.com/

and you can learn how to grow them here http://deerhunterforum.com/index.php?threads/one-thousand-chestnut-trees-a-whitetail-deer-project.108/page-2

[tick trawler]

The GMO shortcut.  "Science" people chomping at the bit to release demons:

 

http://scienceline.org/2017/01/american-chestnut-tree-good-shot-making-comeback/

 

Better to continue with conventional breeding selecting the most promising candidates as stated in the article:

 

"The Foundation also plans to sequence the trees’ genomes to help select the best ones for breeding — those that inherit the greatest number of resistance genes."