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Thomas Fowler locates
Mother Tree near
Springer Mountain |
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GA-TACF member Thomas Fowler, who lives near Ellijay, has located one
of Georgia's largest living American chestnuts trees. Fowler was
first told about the tree in the 1990s by Edwin Dale, a now retired
U.S. Forest Service employee. Having recently recalled
an earlier visit to the tree--which is located in the Toccoa Ranger
District of the Chattahoochee National Forest--Fowler returned to the
site northeast of Springer Mountain in November 2004. Apparently, the
tree is still living, although signs of large, grown-over cankers are
present on the large trunk. Fowler measured the tree's circumference
at 51 inches and estimates it to be more than sixty-feet tall.
Several open burs collected from around the tree by Ellijay resident
Glenda Warwick suggest that some viable nuts may have been produced
in 2004, so a following-up visit to the tree is scheduled for the
spring of 2005. At that time, positive identification of the tree
will be made and its health status officially documented. Due to its
close proximity to a Forest Service road, attempts to pollinate the
large tree will be made if the tree blooms in early summer. |
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Fowler's find is made even more significant due to the fact that
Georgia's champion American chestnut tree, a four-feet-in-diameter
specimen, was
taken down in February, 2004 by
its owner Louis Fountain of Ray City, in south Georgia. In a recent
telephone conversation, Mr. Fountain said the tree had only a portion
of its trunk living and he and his family was afraid the enormous
tree would fall on their home. Mrs. Fountain also added that their
American chestnut specimen was one of a pair of trees that were
planted at each end of their home site near the beginning of 20th
century. Although one tree died soon after the blight struck south
Georgia during the late 1940s, the other continued living,
occasionally even producing a viable nut. The tree had been featured
in the Georgia Department of Agriculture's "Market Bulletin" and was
officially submitted to Georgia's Champion Tree Program in 1994.
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