GSMNP Hemlock update from NPR

[Yallerhammer]

Resprouted chestnuts are very common around here, but they seldom get any size to them before the blight re-attacks. I have found a very few over the years that had gotten big enough to have some blooms and chestnuts on them. The chestnut blight was the worst ecological disaster that has hit the eastern US. Besides the mast and pollinator angles, chestnuts were a primo source of lumber, and the wood was quite rot-resistant. I know where there is a split-rail chestnut fence that is about a hundred years old and still sound. They also grew tall, straight, and huge.

I have a wardrobe I use as a pantry that my grandfather made of chestnut wood that he salvaged from his land after they died off. The doors are made from single boards, each one is over two feet wide.

[Mudwall Gatewood 3.0]

This gentleman, Gary Griffin, President of the American Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation, has told me several times that the American Chestnut will return, but not likely in my lifetime.  His organization is the only one dealing with 100% American that I know of; the other Chestnut groups work with Asian hybrids.

http://www.accf-online.org/

[Yallerhammer]

This gentleman, Gary Griffin, President of the American Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation, has told me several times that the American Chestnut will return, but not likely in my lifetime.  His organization is the only one dealing with 100% American that I know of; the other Chestnut groups work with Asian hybrids.

http://www.accf-online.org/

I planted two ACF trees three years ago. Unfortunately, they already have orange cankers on the trunks. Took a little over a year.

[Woolly Bugger]

My dad brought some American Chestnuts from Maine down to NC, I planted them in the yard, one grew to about 30 feet and was doing great until it matured and blossomed, and got one crop of nuts, but unfortunately, the bugs found the tree that year and bored all around the trunk, it died the next year. :banana072:

Grandpa had a huge elm in the backyard that succumbed to the dreaded Dutch elm disease.

[Grannyknot]

saw a really good documentary on the introduction of the hybrids a while back.
i don't completely understand the science behind it, but they apparently cross the american with the asian, then take the product of that and cross it with an american, and keep crossing the hybrid with an american, and the goal is to eventually get a hybrid that is 99% american, but with the blight tolerance of the asian.

the video claimed there were still a handful of mature 100% american chestnuts left that showed no evidence of blight.  Wouldn't give specific locations in fear of making them targets of environmental terrorism.  I had always heard there was 1 in joyce kilmer memorial forest, but i've never seen it, and my dad walked the loop a year ago and said it was either too small to see, very far off trail, or just not there.

[Woolly Bugger]