Posted on 07/18/2007 6:39:48 AM PDT by Daffynition
Chestnut is a common name for several species of trees in the genus Castanea, in the Beech family Fagaceae.
Neither the horse chestnut (family Sapindaceae) nor the water chestnut (family Cyperaceae) is closely related to the chestnut, though both are so named for producing similar nuts. The name Castanea comes from an old Latin name for the sweet chestnut.
American Chestnuts are special and rare.
Thanks! I suppose I’ll have to start using Wiki, although I’m not too sure about something I could edit myself....
Appreciate your reply.
My father's ancestors come from the level of the mountains where the chestnut trees grow, in Italy. All the men were all carpenters when they came here. Usually when all the immigrants from one town have the same profession, it's because the older immigrants teach the newer ones from their same town. In this case, it's because the sawmill was there (Serra San Bruno) and they all learned to make beautiful things out of the wood.
At Christmastime, I used to watch the old men taste the chestnuts, like they were sampling a fine wine. It's a mystery to me why we have no fabulous chestnut recipes in our family, though. Maybe the chestnuts were considered too marvelous and rare, since the trees bore only a short part of the year. Would you chop them up and make something else out of them?
I think there’s a foundation for the American elm — surviving trees apparently had some natural immunity to elm blight, and seeds / seedlings were available (this was ten or more years ago that I read this) for planting.
However, the way to keep elms healthy (and elms continue to germinate from seeds which have been sleeping in the soil, for example) is to keep them isolated from other elms. They tend to germinate and grow in clumps, so thin them out / cull them.
some little bit of info about chestnut and elm:
http://www.endangeredspecieshandbook.org/projects_saving.php
ah ha! Here it is.
http://www.libertyelm.com/about.htm
The Liberty elm is not a hybrid. ERI’s American Liberty elm is actually a group of six genetically different cultivars. All six look like classic, old fashioned American elms. “You have to look closely and know what you’re looking for to tell the difference among the six,” says Hansel. “To be sure which one you have, you really need DNA analysis.”
Genetic differences provide diversity. Having six cultivars in the series is insurance against all the elms being wiped out by any disease or problem, even one that might show up in the future. ERI mixes all six cultivars in its shipments.
I work with similar organization called the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation who have chosen not to seek blight resistance by crossing with the Asian variety. Our goal is to develop an All American blight resistant tree.
I administer a grove containing approximately 30 all American trees grown from seeds developed by crossing trees exhibiting blight resistance such as the one noted in New Hampshire.
I can very proudly report that I currently have 7 small trees grown from chestnuts produced on the trees in my grove.
Most of my trees exhibit aome blight resistance. I have one producing burrs that so far has no blight. It is 10 years old.
Here is our website: http://www.ppws.vt.edu/griffin/accf.html
I started my association with ACCF in 1990... saving Chestnut trees is slow work. I have 2 trees that are 17 years old
thanks for bringing me to the thread. See my post above
.....American Chestnuts are special and rare.....
Special, but not as rare as you might think.
The blight kills the main stem but can not go underground. The root structure remains intact ans puts up shoots. The mountains of Western North Carolina, East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia host many many trees grown from the roots. Hikers in our mountains know that there are many locations with such growth. These trees generally are reinfected at around 10 years or so and the cycle resumes.
A program of the ACCF takes scions from All American Chestnut produced trees with blight resistance trees are grafted to these powerful old root structures.
I should note that the ACCF program is the work of Dr Gary Griffin at VA Tech and his counterpart in West Virginia.
Over the years, volenteer cooperators such as my self have planted many thoisand seeds and seedlings all across the species range.
Bless you for your diligent work. Future generations will thank you too. To work with a living legacy must be very gratifying.
It may happen sooner than we think.
If I read correctly elsewhere, just this spring, this foundation started planting the first generation of highly blight-resistant Chestnuts in some WV and KY reclaimed mine sites. The trees won’t be available to the public until 2015.
As far as elms, there are a handful of disease-resistant varieties out there that can be bought from a few nurseries today.
The difference with elms is that while Dutch Elm Disease is also destructive, it’s not quite as rampant as Chestnut Blight, to where it’s not all that unusual to see American Elms of large size here and there, but large American Chestnuts are VERY rare, some feel there are less than 100 large, healthy American Chestnuts left in North America.
I see 100 American Elms on my way to work each day. They WILL get DED and die eventually, but most of them live to be old enough to reproduce and therefore the species is a lot more common.
That said the resistant-elms could also prove to bring the species back to it’s fullest extent.
I have 20 more at a second site
The trees are from similar crosses with old Chestnut trees that have escaped the blight. they are second and third generation crosses.I have 6 trees that produce nuts. One is blight free. The others exhibit some symptoms.
I work with The American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation. The scientists allow no Asian or European genes and are working with All American trees.
Here's the website http://ipm.ppws.vt.edu/griffin/accf.html
Thank you for all you do in behalf of these grand trees!
As long as elms are kept isolated, they can grow to very large size, and there’s just not enough of them to spread the disease. Also, I’ve not seen an infected elm around here in years, so the disease may have died out.
Just yesterday I was admiring a nice one in the yard of one of my mother’s neighbors, and that house was built less than 40 years ago. There’s a very nice one on the back line of the mom’s property, probably in the area of 40 years old (if that), and I plan to clear out the much smaller, more recent, and more crowded specimens nearby. :’)
Some elms were naturally immune; they’ve been bred into a resistant native elm strain which at least used to be available from the foundation that did the work.
As long as elms are kept isolated, they can grow to very large size, and there’s just not enough of them to spread the disease. Also, I’ve not seen an infected elm around here in years, so the disease may have died out.
Just yesterday I was admiring a nice one in the yard of one of my mother’s neighbors, and that house was built less than 40 years ago. There’s a very nice one on the back line of the mom’s property, probably in the area of 40 years old (if that), and I plan to clear out the much smaller, more recent, and more crowded specimens nearby. :’)
Some elms were naturally immune; they’ve been bred into a resistant native elm strain which at least used to be available from the foundation that did the work.
Thanks!
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