That is just amazing. I have been looking at all kinds of remaining american chestnut trees and have never seen them like this. quite spectacular. and in a complete chance, about 10 minutes ago i noticed that most of the american chestnut seeds that i have planted are sprouting! I am going to have american chestnuts growing here! just gotta hope that the blight isnt big here. we are about 100 miles from its native range.
Your pictures are just unbelieveable, thanks for sharing them!

Wonderful. Is there any natural regeneration?

Pinetree,

That's a great question and one I forgot to ask. I noticed one growing in a wooded area along the road as I was driving away, but I can't say for sure it wasn't planted. The owner's are very nice people and gave me permission to come back to see them in flower and collect nuts. I'll make a mental note to check on this.

Bob

I heard about these trees in Wisconsin a few years ago but have never seen pictures of them. They don't really look 137 years old to me, but they may look bigger in person. Are any of those smaller trees in the background also chestnut?

A.T.H.,

I have no idea what a 100+ Chestnut should look like, so can't really comment on that. I wonder if one grown in Wisconsin wouldn't be quite a bit smaller than those in its natural range? They looked pretty big to me and I'll take the owner's word on age until proven otherwise. They had just cut down a couple of them (structural concerns), and he asked if I knew anyone who wanted the saw logs. I was working in the area and didn't have as much time as I would have liked, but I should have tried counting rings to get an idea of their age. Now that I think about it, I kind of blew it. Oh well, they're only about 70 miles from where I live so I should be able to back and learn a bit more about them (and collect nuts).

Bob

Hybrids with Castanea sativa distributed in North America quite awhile ago, should be ruled out before calling any found trees pure American chestnuts.

"The most famous hybrid in the early decades was 'Paragon', which originated [before/during]1880 in Germantown, PA. Often sold in U.S. nurseries at least until 1907, it was the most widely planted nut cultivar, featuring larger nuts, borne even while tree is young. Hybrids can be very difficult to distinguish and there is often dispute as to parentage."

--Arthur Lee Jacobson, North American Landscape Trees

I suppose that's true, Ron, but I'd think that the U of Minnesota using seed from these trees in their research should give some validity to them being pure C. dentata. No?

Wow... just, wow!

I've never seen that many mature American Chestnuts (assuming that they are pure American Chestnut, but you get the idea) in the wild before... or anywhere before! That is really something!

Too bad they have no blight resistance... *sigh* Still, what a find!

Eventually, the American Chestnut will return thanks to blight resistant hybrids, but for now, enjoy what you have!

Chestnut blight is as far north as Wisconsin.

Here is a link that might be useful: Last Great STand

That's interesting. The stand of Chestnuts in this article are near West Salem, which is no more than 30 miles SE of the trees I looked at. It was apparently popular to plant Chestnuts in this area back in the late 1800's. Makes you wonder how the trees I looked at have managed to escape the blight this long.

When I bought my timberland back in 1975 there still were remnants of the giant old chestnut trees. There was one old snag, a hollow old trunk that was weathered to a silvery color. It was about 7' in diameter. There were several others not quite as large. And there were places where the sprouts from the old dead trees were think in the undergrowth of stands of oak trees. I once hoped that the hypovirulent strains of the fungus that caused all the chestnuts to die would work to control the fungus, as it did in Europe, and all these sprouts would be able to grow back to replace the lost forests of chestnut. But no such luck. The sprouts are basically all gone now, largely because of deer browseing as well as repeated onslaughts of the fungus. And those magnificent silvery old dead chestnut tree trunks have all since fallen over and have almost completely rotted into the ground.

--Spruce

very nice little stand of chestnuts there,love the bark in pic 2!
Studpid question, but whats dbh?
The largest has a dbh of about 4'

"whats dbh?"

Diameter at Breast Height, i.e., the thickness of the trunk at 1.3m above ground. A standard forestry measurement.

Resin

Information according to the American Chestnut Foundation's newsletters: Hypovirulance does not appear to work reliably here in America because there are many different strains of blight present here. In Europe, there are far fewer strains, so once they become hypovirulant, the tree has a greater chance of survival. In America, there are simply too many different varities of blight, and even if a few hypovirulant ones are present, a different, standard (lethal) version will end up killing most of the chestnut trees.

I've only seen one wild, living chestnut tree in a local park, though there are other small ones in the park as well, but they are all sprouts, too young and too shaded out to ever bear nuts. It is a sad tale, and I hope that the blight resistant trees succeed and people plant them.

I have some of the Hybrid American X Chinese chestnuts. I planted all of them in a woodland area. I wasn't even going to risk putting them in the visible landscape. Only time will tell if they survive.

I read somewhere that a stand of chestnuts has been found in west Georgia.
Anybody know anything about these trees? Is their isolation what helped them survive? Are they pure castanea dentata? Are any acorns or seedling trees from the Georgia group available for sale?
Sherry

The U of MN had to remove one of their chestnut trees at the MN Arboretum due to blight, so it has moved at least into south-central MN too :-(

I don't know why I asked whether or not there were any acorns available from chestnut trees - I should have said chestnuts! DUH!
Sherry

I have two confirmed American Chestnut trees in my yard in Victoria. I was looking forward to harvesting some chestnuts this fall, but last week the nuts started opening on the tree and dropping small "Seeds" rather than nuts. Is there something wrong? Are the small nuts a result of the climate? Is there something I can do to get larger nuts?