For American chestnuts, a rebirth after a fatal blight

FALLS VILLAGE — Ellery “Woods†Sinclair looked with obvious pride at the plot of some 300 American chestnut saplings off Undermountain Road in Falls Village Saturday.

“We had to water them three times over the summer,†he said. “It was dry.â€

Sinclair shared a torrent of information about the trees last weekend when he hosted one of a series of Housatonic Heritage walks, sponsored by the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area.

Until the early 20th century, the American chestnut represented one in five hardwood trees in forests in the eastern United States, Sinclair said (the others being maples, oaks, birches and ash trees).

And as settlers cleared fields, the chestnut, a light-seeking species, flourished.

The chestnut wood was highly sought after for building. Sinclair passed around a couple of rock-hard samples, while saying that because the trees grew tall and straight, they were used for ships’ masts and telegraph — later telephone — poles. And because the wood was highly resistant to rot, it was employed for railroad ties and coffins.

Sinclair showed off a chestnut walking stick, with a characteristic split running its length. “That’s a typical split when dried,†he said. “Came in handy for Abe Lincoln splitting rails — he didn’t have to work all that hard.â€

And the nuts — rich in protein and fats — were a major food source for wildlife and for settlers. In some areas, chestnuts were not a luxury item but a fundamental part of a subsistence diet.

But in the late 1890s, Chinese chestnuts were imported for ornamental use and specimens were included in the collections of major botanical gardens.

It was at the Brooklyn Botanic  Garden, Sinclair said, that the disease that would wipe out nearly  all the American chestnuts was first spotted. A fatal canker on the trees was spread by a fungus from the Asian imports, and the American chestnut had almost no resistance.

By 1950, some 4 billion trees on about 9 million acres of eastern forests had been wiped out by the blight.

The trees in the Falls Village grove are 15/16 American chestnut, the result of careful breeding and selection now in its fourth generation.

These trees will be intercrossed with other 15/16 trees, to increase blight resistance and American chestnut characteristics, Sinclair said.

And in another couple of years the trees will be deliberately exposed to the fungus that causes the blight.

The ultimate goal is an American chestnut that is 94-percent resistant to the disease.

Sinclair said he tells the students from Housatonic Valley Regional High School who have been working on the project since its inception, “It’s your grandchildren who will see the trees and pick the nuts off the forest floor.â€

There will be another weekend of Housatonic Heritage walks and talks on the weekend of Oct. 2 and 3. For information, go to heritage-hikes.org.