UPS AND DOWNS AND UPS WITH CHESTNUTS
The Best of Them, No More
Of all species of chestnuts, none is finer than the American chestnut. This majestic tree towered to 100 feet high in America’s virgin forests and yielded a wood that was used in musical instruments, molding, fenceposts, barrel staves, even telephone poles. The nuts of American chestnut are deliciously sweet and flavorful. Or, so I have read and been told, having never tasted one myself.
But the sturdy chestnut had its Achille’s heel — chestnut blight. The disease, accidentally introduced from Asia, was first noted at New York’s Bronx Zoo in 1906. It spread 25 to 50 miles a year and within 50 years had left 7 million acres of Appalachian forests with dead or dying chestnut trees.
The American chestnut is not gone, though. Trees cling tenaciously to life. Read more
