Fifteen Minutes in the Forest: American Chestnut

American chestnut once dominated the Appalachian Forest. Both wildlife and humans relied heavily on these trees for food and shelter. In the early 1900's, the introduction of a nonnative invasive disease, the chestnut blight, resulted in massive die off of mature American chestnuts throughout its native range.

Since then, researchers have been working to isolate the genes that control resistance to the blight and introduce them into the American chestnut genome. Ideally, they will create trees that have all the desirable characteristics of the American chestnut, tall, straight stems and large nutritious nuts, as well as a resistance to the blight.

This video highlights the research efforts of the American Chestnut Foundation, just one of many groups working on this solution.

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Where can one buy some American Chestnut seeds or trees?