| You may have heard of chestnuts roasting on an open
fire or used in Thanksgiving stuffing, but have you ever seen a
chestnut tree?
Perhaps not, since the American chestnut, once the crowning glory
of Georgia's mountain forests, came close to extinction due to a
lethal fungus infestation. More than 200 million acres of Eastern
woodlands from Maine to Florida were once filled with these growing
trees. Now, it's up to science to keep them alive.
“The death of the American chestnut was due to an exotic blight
introduced in the United States from Asian nursery stock around
1904,” says Don Davis, environmental historian and associate
professor of sociology at Dalton State College. “The disease spread
quickly southward at an astounding rate of 50 miles per year and, by
1920, American chestnut trees in the Great Smoky Mountains were
doomed. By the mid-1930s, the blight had reached North Georgia, and
by 1940 there was scarcely a tree in the entire state that was not
infected with the disease.”
Today The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF), based in Bennington,
Vt., is working hard to restore the tree to the forests of Eastern
North America by engineering a fully blight-resistant tree. By
backcrossing the genes of an American chestnut with those of the
naturally resistant Chinese chestnut tree, scientists have bred a
stronger tree that has retained the traits of the American species.
The TACF hopes to test the new plantings by 2006.
A network of chestnut-tree advocates has spread across the
Southeast, working with local state TACF chapters. Currently a group
of dedicated volunteers, including Davis, are working to return the
tree to Georgia forests.
Davis says the public is invited to a forum, set for July 17 at
the Cohutta Lodge in Chatsworth, to learn more about American
chestnut trees from national and regional experts and to organize a
Georgia chapter of the TACF. Participants will also visit Fort
Mountain State Park to view these trees in their native habitat. For
more information or to register for this meeting, e-mail
smithminifarm@charter.net.
To join the Georgia chapter of the TACF, or to find out how you can
help in their efforts, write to GaTACF, 136 W Belmont Drive, Suite
11-138, Calhoun, GA 30701-3064 or visit the TACF Web site at
www.acf.org.
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