Where there be mountains, there be chestnuts
By JOANNE KITTLE Plant rescue team

Bearing Chestnut tree

"Where there be mountains, there be chestnuts" is a quote from a member of DeSoto's expedition in the 1500's. Our Southern Appalachian mountains were a prime growing forest for the Chestnut tree where it once occupied about 25% of the forest. The trees were "virtually " wiped out in the 1930's from a fungus blight. I say "virtually " because there are survivors. The chestnuts are a prolific tree. You can see them sprouting up everywhere in our National Forest. Good sites to see the chestnut saplings are the Miller Trek, north of Neel's gap on the AT, and Brasstown Bald. One Appalachian through-hiker counted more than 40,100 growing trees on his hike in 1999.

The blight is suspected to have entered our country through an imported Japanese Chestnut tree infected with the fungus and spread rapidly from the Bronx through the Appalachians to North Carolina and Georgia.

The American Chestnut Foundation is working to help the Chestnut in its fight for survival. Both NC and GA have active chapters of the foundation. The GA chapter had its annual meeting in Blairsville at the GA Mountain Research and Education Center (AKA "Experiment Station") on April 28. The center is the site of a recently planted experimental orchard of chestnut trees. The goal is to develop a hybrid chestnut variety that has the characteristics of the American Chestnut but the disease resistance of the Chinese Chestnut. Starting with trees that are 50% American and 50% Chinese, trees are back cross bred with the ultimate product being 15/16th American Chestnut but still blight resistant from the 1/16th that is Chinese chestnut.

A Mother Chestnut tree.

Besides fighting the blight, chestnut trees share the plight with a 1000 other species in the need to fight Phytophthora cinnamomi, a fungus that causes root rot.

But the Chestnut is a survivor. There are full bred American chestnut trees in our forest. Brasstown Bald has quite a few of them and some of them are fully mature trees bearing burrs and nuts. One is on the road up to the Bald by mile marker 8. It is a "mother tree" and is being used by the GA chapter to harvest nuts to grow seedlings. The process is very controlled and volunteer intensive. In the spring, volunteers gather pollen from "father" trees (in this case from a grove in VA that has disease resistant hybrids) and at just the right time, manually pollinate the Brasstown tree and cover the blooms with bags to insure no other pollen is available to the flower. They bag only 9/10ths of the flowers allowing 1/10th to be a control. Then in the fall, they carefully monitor the tree to determine when to harvest the burrs. They harvest the burrs rather than the nuts because if they wait for the nuts to break loose from the burrs, the squirrels will beat them to the harvest. The squirrels love the nuts and in fact, they beat the volunteers to the nuts last year. Other "survivors" can be found on the Arkaquah trail about 12 mile down from Brasstown Bald. Two of them were marked with orange tape.

Photos by Bill Oswald

Next year, 2008, will be the 25th anniversary of the American Chestnut Foundation with celebrations planned. One of the events will be at Neel's gap and another event will be a walk of the entire Appalachian trail with volunteers carrying chestnut "batons" which will be passed on from one to another and counting of the number of saplings and trees on the trail. It is moving to see the sprouts as one walks the trail but also sad in that most of the saplings succumb to the blight after they grow about 12 feet tall. Dead trees are also seen in the forest; some can be found on the Arkaquah trail near Brasstown Bald.

Left: A close up view of the distinct leaves of the tree.

The restoration of the American Chestnut to its rightful place in our forest is a long term project but a worthy objective for the future. The GA chapter is looking for volunteers, whether you are or are not a member of the chapter. Or you can become a volunteer at the GA Research and Education Center.

This article is written as part of the outreach of the Plant rescue team of the Center with the goal of encouraging readers to enjoy the beauty of our forests and mountains and hopefully to help preserve it. Here are information links: For the GA chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, www.gatacf.org. For the NC chapter, http://carolinastacf. org/about.php. For the GA Mountains Research and Education Center, http://www.gmrec.uga.edu/. For more information on the Plant Rescue Team, contact Jennifer Cordier (706-745- 9317) ivylog@alltel.net or you can contact me, Johanne Kittle ( 8 2 8 - 3 8 9 - 0 8 1 4 ) billjokitt@dnet.net. The Plant Rescue Team's motto is "An earth friendly approach to land usage without restricting property owner rights".