The American chestnut is a tree with a historyDate: 1/3/2023 WHATELY – A cause for hope concluded a presentation by the Whately Historical Society, “Rise and Fall of the American Chestnut,” on Dec. 11. The sampling was fitting because, as Ann Lomeli made clear, few trees played such an outsized role in American history as the chestnut, as a food, a material and a source for street names.
Better known as the daughter of Herbert and Connie Futter, Lomeli said, “In the early 1960s we found ourselves living on a street called Chestnut Plain Road … my pediatrician’s office was on Chestnut Street … [and] each time we drove … on Route 91 we drove under Chestnut Street in Hatfield.”
“Chestnut” is the 12th most common street name in the Bay State. The tree, according to Lomeli, has 65 million years of history. The chestnut descended from oak trees on the islands of Japan, and managed to cross Laurasia, a land bridge connecting North America, Europe and Asia, before evolving into a giant member of the New England ecosystem. Lomeli said the primary source for her presentation was "The American Chestnut, an environmental history," by Donald Edward Davis.
By the 1500s chestnuts grew from Maine to Louisiana. Where, then, Lomeli wondered as a child, was the plain of trees of Chestnut Plain Road? The trees were under attack by humans. According to Lomeli, by the 1600s 20 million cords of chestnut firewood were being cut every year. Furniture, barrel staves, fence posts and household items were crafted of chestnut. Split shingles and railroad ties were also made of chestnut.
Chestnut growers began grafting foreign species onto the American chestnut, a smaller variety with sweeter nuts, to make the nuts bigger. The chestnut blight first appeared in the New York Botanical Garden in 1904. A fungus on twigs from two specific nurseries in Japan, grafted onto trees in New York, began the blight that in 50 years all but wiped out the American chestnut.
“The loss of the American chestnut tree didn’t just impact humans, it dramatically affected wildlife as it was a significant food source for many creatures, including insects. It changed the ecosystems of forests,” Lomeli said. “It is a dramatic example of how human intervention and consumption can have catastrophic effects.”
Neal Abrams, chair of the Historical Society, agreed: “This tree is an important part of Whately history.”
Allison Bell, a member of the Historical Society, spoke about the American chestnuts. The roots of chestnuts live a century, Abrams said, and many are still alive in Whately. The roots generate sprouts, which grow to several feet tall before being attacked by the blight. The saplings die and the cycle repeats.
“We have stump sprouts in Whately but we’re still on the hunt for a mature tree,” Bell said.
According to Bell, Native Americans were great consumers of chestnuts. The nut features a protective shell with spiny needles, a very hard natural packaging. Hand-sized rocks were used to crack the nuts open.
Bell displayed old receipts and bills of production showing chestnut lumber sold for about twice the price of hemlock, maple and other woods. The going rate was a dollar for 100 linear feet. A current resident, Paul Newman, told the commission his barn has chestnut framing boards. The Judson barn, visible to motorists on River Road, is also full of chestnut beams.
“It’s still with us, still holding things up today,” Bell said.
The third speaker of the afternoon was Paul Wetszel, manager at MacLeish Field Station, which harbors a chestnut tree seed orchard. The seed orchard is part of the American Chestnut Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to returning the chestnut to its range in North America.
“They were huge,” Wetszel said. “They were called the sequoias of the east. … This was an important tree for both human and animals … as wood, as a food source.”
Wetszel emphasized the cultural role of chestnuts, which are still identifiable as a hair color.
“Some people estimate there were four billion chestnut trees that died” between 1904 and 1950, Wetszel said. “You get 80 million trees dying every year. … It was a significant event culturally and for the forest.”
Nectera parasitica is the fungus responsible for chestnut tree blight — but there is hope. According to Wetszel, at the MacLeish Field Station, among the chestnut trees almost all show some level of infestation. His hopes are up because three trees do not show evidence of blight … yet.
“We might get lucky,” Wetszel said. “There’s also a virus that kills the fungus. … There is a way to inoculate the tree, to kill the fungus.”
Wetszel described the practice of challenging a tree to discover if it has evolved, genetically, to protect itself from the blight. Arborists notch a young tree, lay in a dollop of fungus, seal it up, then wait a year to see if the tree is hardy and resistant. If so, the tree is challenged again with a more virulent fungal strain.
Syracuse University scientists bred a genetically modified organism (GMO), a chestnut tree that has resistance to the blight. Those trees are sold commercially, with two standing on the town green in Warwick, for example. There are distinct drawbacks to GMO chestnuts, Wetszel said. They do not have the genetic diversity that guarantees all the characteristics that a tree needs to survive in the current landscape will remain in the gene pool as the trees proliferate. The gene pool, Wetszel said, needs diversity.
Jono Neiger, lead designer and owner of Regenerative Design Group in Greenfield, closed the discussion by saying the loss of the American chestnut was a tragedy, but that a long view of history is required.
“My take is, the American chestnut is a total calamity and a tragedy, but it’s important to think in the longer term. … We know these kinds of diseases have swept through the ecosystem,” Neiger said.
He told the sizable audience the eastern white pine died back about 5,000 years ago, only to regenerate its numbers over the next several thousand years. The American chestnut may do the same thing.
“Even though we’re part of the problem, that’s the way ecosystems work. … If we can get out of the way it will come back, [the ecosystem] will restore a lot of these pieces,” Neiger said.
Neiger will help. He talked about his farm of more than seven acres, Big Chestnut Farm, located along the Connecticut River, where chestnuts are again under cultivation in the valley.
“This is year five, and the trees are coming in 5, 7, 8, even 15 feet tall,” Neiger said.
The audience then enjoyed a nut tasting, fresh sweet meats of American chestnut trees growing in the valley, a possible sign the humans who caused the calamity are beginning to undo it.
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