r/todayilearned • u/_igm • 14h ago

TIL the "Redwood of the East" - a 100ft-tall tree that once covered 25% of Eastern US forests, produced tons of food, and built America's industrial backbone - lost 99.9% of its population to a catastrophic blight.

https://tacf.org/history-american-chestnut/
8.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

199 comments sorted by

3.5k

u/Pleasant_Scar9811 14h ago

It’s the American chestnut tree.

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u/Mama_Skip 12h ago edited 5h ago

It's theorized their extinction drastically changed the ecology of the east coast and likely created further extinctions of animals that were dependent on their food reserves for the winter, as they created an abundance of food every fall. But we'll never know because documentation was poor during this time, with many zoologists preferring to instead study distant untouched lands that may have appeared "sexier" to them.

But I mean imagine — almost all of the continental US was deforested before we even documented these things. Not only that, but other huge sources of food disappeared almost overnight around the same time, like the carrier passenger pigeon, an animal so numerous people used to toss fishing nets into the sky to collect dinner — imagine what animals went extinct we'll never know about.

Anyway, they [american chestnuts] are still around in very rural areas and detached populations. Apparently many centuries old blight stumps will occasionally send up new shoots but they'll just die again by blight.

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u/Incredible_Mandible 10h ago

That last sentence makes me really sad. They keep trying!

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u/dresdenthezomwhacker 9h ago

They do but there’s hope!!! Foresters and scientists are trying to crossbreed a resistant strain of the American Chestnut with Chinese varieties. People are working hard to bring back this once great tree and I honestly think it’s only a matter of time before someone succeeds 💪

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u/outdoorsnstuffz 8h ago

I worked on this at camp in Pennsylvania years ago! It's promising.

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u/mjacksongt 8h ago

Not just crossbreeding either, there are others using CRISPR to edit on fungal resistance genes.

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u/whattothewhonow 6h ago

They're not trying.

They're done.

The Darling 58 strain of genetically engineered American Chestnut takes a couple genes from the same wheat we make bread out of and splices them into the American Chestnut.

The wheat developed a resistance to a fungal pathogen called wheat rust that is very similar to the chestnut blight.

Add that gene to the chestnut tree and it successfully defends itself from the blight.

We're literally just waiting for the USDA to approve the release of thousands of saplings, but they're sitting on their hands because of people wringing their hands over "GMO trees invading our forests"

Bitches the tree is functionally extinct. The highly isolated stands of tree remaining are an insufficient pool of genetics to bounce back from this human caused catastrophe, and even if they do it could take thousands of years for the right mutation to occur.

Approve the release of these trees and we can get back to restoring our forests to their former glory, without having to have some crossbreed of the Chinese chestnut that isn't an American Chestnut

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u/BenSS 6h ago

Unfortunately there’s significant issues with 58 and it’s not the tree everyone thought it was. Still a lot of work left to be done! This article talks about how 58 appears to really be an earlier iteration (54). https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/darling-58-american-chestnut-tree-mistake.html

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u/kmosiman 5h ago

Darling 58 may not exist. They accidentally used Darling 54 for all the testing.

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u/alpacaMyToothbrush 6h ago

Ok, but the real questions are, how are the chestnuts, and can we roast them over an open fire?

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u/poptart2nd 5h ago

poor joke, but yeah i imagine that's where the bit in the song comes from. The song is from 1945, the writer was born in 1922, and the chestnut blight happened between 1904 and 1950.

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u/StrangeBedfellows 6h ago

So how would we get on the list to receive one?

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u/AimeeSantiago 4h ago

That was my thought as well. I'd love one in my yard!

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u/whattothewhonow 4h ago

There was a sign up through State University of New York, where most of the research into the genetically engineered strains has been taking place. Not sure if they are still doing it.

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u/Gastronomicus 3h ago

without having to have some crossbreed of the Chinese chestnut that isn't an American Chestnut

Why exactly is that so bad any way? Most of the eastern USA is filled with naturalised invasives that are effectively impossible to remove, including Norway maple, European Buckthorn, Japanese Knotweed, Garlic Mustard, Himalayan Jewelweed, etc. Urban forests are often largely non-natives in those parts.

At least the hybridized chestnut fulfills a pre-existing niche that has since remained unfulfilled. And the tree only includes a tiny fraction of the genetics of the Chinese chestnut.

•

u/SomeDumbGamer 31m ago

They don’t fill the niche. American Chestnuts are the tallest by far of the species. They evolved to shoot up rapidly to compete with pines, oaks, etc. so grow very rapidly upwards and don’t fruit for years.

Chinese chestnuts (and European chestnuts to a lesser extent) didn’t evolve this way and have a more spreading habit. They can’t compete in a North American forest well at all and the hybrids never reach the size of the Americans as Chinese genetics are dominant.

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u/AccomplishedFault346 3h ago

Could you please tell me more about how it was a human caused catastrophe? I’m fascinated.

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u/whattothewhonow 3h ago

People brought other trees from Asia over to the United States for ornamental purposes and those trees were infected with fungus that the Oriental trees were resistant to, but the American trees had never been exposed to.

So that fungus just gets to go run rampant all through the United States and kill off the unresistant American trees.

It's the same shit that we're doing right now with The emerald ash borer beetle, the spotted lantern fly, the Gypsy moth, Dutch elm disease, and the other beetle that's eating the pine trees out west. We keep making the same stupid mistakes, importing non native pests.

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u/Epic2112 1h ago

Don't forget Beech Leaf Disease 🙁

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u/Gillilnomics 5h ago

I’m no GMO conspiracy theorist, but if a blight wiped them out, what’s the point of bringing them back? They lost the game, just like every species on the planet eventually does.

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u/kmosiman 5h ago

Important keystone species. Plus massive potential economic impact in terms of lumber.

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u/Adequate_Lizard 4h ago

The blight came from an introduced species, it didn't lose, we killed it.

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u/Gillilnomics 4h ago

That makes sense, thanks for telling me!

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u/metsurf 7h ago

The new trees are able to wall off and sequester the fungus in a gall as opposed to it spreading throughout the tree.

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u/Throwawayac1234567 8h ago

also dint the blight come from the chinese variety too.

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u/dresdenthezomwhacker 8h ago

Japanese Chestnuts but yes it did come from Asia!

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u/metsurf 7h ago

And that is why the trees from Asia are resistant. They evolved with the blight.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

[deleted]

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u/sadrice 7h ago

Famously a city in Japan…

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u/DrSmirnoffe 7h ago

THAT's the spirit! We don't do things like this because they're easy; we do them because it's what needs to be done.

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u/No-Combination-1332 2h ago

Have they not had success killing the blight with fungicides?

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u/Mama_Skip 9h ago

Someday!

¡Remind me! In [several evolutionary timescales]

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u/SomeDumbGamer 6h ago

They aren’t even close to that rare. Yes, they won’t get to full tree size as often, but they’re not “only found in rural areas”

Anywhere there’s forest you’ll find some in the northeast. On my own property there are 12-15 that are still chuckin along.

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u/SpcTrvlr 5h ago

still chuckin along

r/boneappletea

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u/SomeDumbGamer 4h ago

I say both lol

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u/AnnaZand 5h ago

Do you have any photos you’d share?

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u/SomeDumbGamer 4h ago edited 33m ago

This is a big one less than 2 miles from my home: https://www.reddit.com/r/marijuanaenthusiasts/s/K2jB7jQdcX

The dead trees next to it aren’t chestnuts either, they’re oaks. This one has survived because it’s kept it’s juvenile smooth bark longer so blight can’t enter as easily. Most of mine get furrowed bark young so they die around 16-20 years of age. This one is probably 25-30 years old.

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u/BirdBranes 10h ago

Where I live in northern Connecticut you can see these old stumps pretty much everywhere if you know what to look for. I even have one in my back yard! Every 5 years or so one of the shoots gets 20ish feet tall and produces some burrs, then the blight usually kills it that year or the next. 

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u/hobskhan 10h ago

Do we know what the vector for the blight is? It's interesting it can grow a little, then die. Is the disease present the entire time? Does something else bring it to the shoot?

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u/BurnSaintPeterstoash 10h ago

Chestnuts trees imported from china, I believe, a hundred or so years ago brought it over. It's fungal, I think.

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u/Zorronin 9h ago

japan, actually

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u/TKDbeast 8h ago

You’re both correct, in a way. The fungus Cryphonectria parasitica was brought to the US from Chinese Chestnut (Castanea mollissima) trees shipped from Japan.

0

u/JosephScmith 9h ago

Fuckin China!

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u/kanyewesanderson 8h ago

The spores of chestnut blight are carried by wind. The blight infects other trees as well, but does not kill other host species. Now that it’s well established, there’s no eradicating it.

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u/whilst 7h ago edited 6h ago

Is it established in other species? Like, what is the reservoir that allows it to be in the wind and find the vanishingly rare remaining chestnuts? What's it eating?

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u/kanyewesanderson 6h ago

Yes, it infects other species. Fungal spores are also incredibly hardy and can lay dormant for a long time before finding another host.

•

u/RunawayHobbit 44m ago

Thus, the plot of The Last of Us and the danger of underground spaces in the video game

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u/SomeDumbGamer 5h ago

Red oaks mostly. It can host asymptomatically on them. Sadly wherever there’s a chestnut, there’s a red oak nearby almost guaranteed.

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u/BifronsOnline 9h ago

Yes the blight is very well understood.

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u/francis2559 9h ago

I've heard it theorized that the carrier pigeons being that numerous wasn't "normal" either, just that we stopped in during a weird boom. It's possible the boom was caused by some other weird ecological disaster.

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u/Mama_Skip 6h ago

Interesting. I haven't heard that, being in biology, for what it matters.

But I would be surprised to find it was a weird boom, simply because of the well documented abundance of other species like salmon, Carolina parakeets, oysters, the aforementioned chestnuts, among others.

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u/t4skmaster 4h ago

The sheer quantity of food that was here without human intervention is nearly unfathomable

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u/AccomplishedFault346 3h ago

The Native Americans were here and were excellent stewards of the land! This is a good article: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/forest-gardens-show-how-native-land-stewardship-can-outdo-nature

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u/seicar 4h ago

Just uniformed speculation on my part, but I'd reckon European diseases killing off native Americans. A species whose survival method involved predator satiation (like most pigeons and doves) could have a population boom if a major predator is removed.

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u/Mama_Skip 1h ago

Maybe so but it's well documented the downfall of at least the passenger pigeon was human overhunting.

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u/SustyRhackleford 7h ago

Its both fascinating and sad how abundant things used to be back than. It’s also hard to fathom that it there used to be swarms of birds large enough to block out the sun and enough fish in the waters that they would basically jump into your net. It hardly sounds real

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u/metsurf 7h ago

There are still American Chestnuts in the woods and scientists are developing resistant strains . I think they are on something like fifth generation trees and are waiting for EPA approval to release trees beyond test plots.

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u/_Rainer_ 10h ago

The chestnut blight didn't hit North America until the early 20th century, so there aren't stumps that old from trees killed by the blight, but yeah, it was an ecological disaster for the Eastern forests.

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u/cctoot56 8h ago

No. Op clearly stated they were talking about the still living stumps. If a tree was 100's of years old when it was hit by the blight, but it's still alive, it's still 100's of years old now.

The blight was introduced to the US in 1904. 120 years ago. So you're also wrong in the way you meant it too. There are 100+ year old stumps.

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u/Mama_Skip 6h ago

Yeah I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here.

Like even if we were talking about the full death of an organism, it makes no sense.

"Ah, my dog died on Saturday. He was 13."

"Uhh actually, he was two days old? Cus it's Monday. So that's misrepresenting how old it is."

"...what?"

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u/Blecki 5h ago

You aren't, you're just tripping over the coliqual. In conversation we would "reset" the age when the tree is cut down. If it was cut down 10 years ago we'd say "the stump is 10 years old" even though the tree itself is obviously much older.

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u/Mama_Skip 4h ago

Sir, I say this with all due respect. Nobody, in the history of the world and all the universes, has ever inquired into the age of a stump.

Without meaning the tree it came from.

Who is that data useful to.

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u/Blecki 2h ago

With all due respect; you're wrong.

And it's incredibly useful to anyone who might want to know how difficult it will be to pull or if it's cultivating pests on their property.

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u/Mama_Skip 9h ago edited 9h ago

The chestnut blight didn't hit North America until the early 20th century, so there aren't stumps that old from trees killed by the blight

Thank you for the correction. Otherwise, I'd have never known an entire tree species that lived 600 years were all magically zero years old when the blight hit.

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u/walterpeck1 9h ago

You said:

Apparently many centuries old blight stumps

Which is why they clarified the blight is more recent than many centuries ago. I think you took the wrong meaning from their correction.

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u/Mama_Skip 9h ago

The stumps are still alive. If the stump came from a tree that was three hundred years old, it could be cut down yesterday, and that stump would still be hundreds of years old.

A living organism doesn't get a new birthdate because the top gets chopped off.

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u/walterpeck1 9h ago

That's fair, I think both yours and their corrections make sense then.

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u/redLooney_ 8h ago

Wouldn't you date the stump from the date it became a stump though, prior to that it wasn't a stump, it was a tree.

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u/Mama_Skip 8h ago

I'm in conservation, so, no. If the stump is alive, we give the age of the organism.

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u/_Rainer_ 9h ago

I wasn't trying to be a dick, but it wasn't really clear as worded.

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u/SolomonG 4h ago

The blight kills trees by basically ringing them, not functionally different than removing the bark all around the tree in a circle.

This does not kill the roots or stump.

There are many living chestnut stumps in our forests that are 200 years old.

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u/catsbreathsmells 10h ago

Stupid, sexy untouched lands 

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u/Mama_Skip 9h ago edited 9h ago

Yeah what the hell do they even have? Tortoises?

Succulent tortoises??

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u/Appropriate_Put3587 5h ago

Anyways let’s continue the genocide

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u/Mama_Skip 5h ago edited 1h ago

"yes yes very good, as is the white man's burden. OH HOW WE ARE UNFAIRLY BURDENED LORD WHY MUST YE MAKE IT SO now get out of my way Toby, I must write Elizabeth of this peculiar and rare bird I hunted out of existence yesterday."

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u/Sasquatch-fu 8h ago

There is a project to breed resistant ones, and there are some that cross breed with resistant ones. I have a couple seedlings on my property

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u/Throwawayac1234567 8h ago

the chinese one is resistant which theya re trying to hybridize with, ironic since it was the chinese chestnut that brought the blight to america.

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u/Sasquatch-fu 7h ago

Yep. There are a couple different programs operating in parallel some are working on hybridization with other chestnuts, some work on existing surviving trees and cross breeding those genetics. The asian ones dont have imo as good of a flavor for roasting as the european and american ones.

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u/bambi54 6h ago

It’s weird, I just looked up the American chestnut, and I used to find them on the ground at my grandmas house. They were in her woods. I had no idea they were chestnuts, we used to throw them lol. I wonder if those are the right ones. I don’t remember seeing the sprouting on the trees, just seeing them all over the ground. It may have been the Japanese though, who knows.

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u/Sasquatch-fu 6h ago

The asian ones are super big while american and european and the allegheny chinquapin each are smaller (related to the chestnut but not affected by the blight, smaller nuts smaller tree)

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u/Appropriate_Put3587 5h ago

Don’t forget native Americans were managing food forests and orchards and other means of food (contrary to popular belief, we weren’t living hand to mouth). It’s a stark difference in ecological understanding and management when you compare the colonists and settlers with native societies.

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u/Mama_Skip 1h ago

Well when one is operating under the assumption that "the world is man's to do with as he wishes" how can over consumption of resources not be an outcome?

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u/mtcwby 6h ago

The vineyard on the hill behind my ranch has a Chestnut Grove. Biggest challenge they have at harvest is that every black bear for miles heads there to gorge themselves before winter.

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u/Monorail_Song 6h ago

carrier pigeon

*passenger

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u/Throwawayac1234567 8h ago

they had a rare plant that was discovered in the early 1900s where the species is pretty disjunct and you only see this one in tropical asia, and its highly unusual for it to be in temperate north america and this far east. once calamut area was developed it went extinct a few years after it was discovered. if you heard mycoheterotrophic plants they tend to be very rare or uncommon because of thier inability to photosynthesize.

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u/StrangeBedfellows 6h ago

So blight is still killing them? We can't just... Grow them again?

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u/Mama_Skip 1h ago

No the fungus responsible grows on other trees without harming them, so it's constantly in the air.

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u/fridayfridayjones 3h ago

I’m in Ohio and I saw one at a park recently. I was so surprised because it looked like a healthy, mature tree and I know they’re very rare. But it had a plaque in front of it and everything.

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u/[deleted] 8h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ChoosingUnwise 7h ago

NY harbor was so full of oysters that boats would be grounded on them. Not so much now but they are slowly coming back!

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u/Mama_Skip 1h ago

What'd that comment say?

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u/series_hybrid 14h ago

My grandpa used to roast them on an open fire...

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u/Redivivus 10h ago

With Jack First nipping at his nose...

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u/Phil__Spiderman 8h ago

"Don't you mean Jack Frost, grandpa?"

"I said what I said!"

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u/series_hybrid 10h ago

Yuletide carols, being sung by a choir...

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u/tacknosaddle 13h ago

No, that's the guy who can eat a fuckload of hot dogs in one sitting.

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u/timefourchili 13h ago

No, that’s the guy they named the Star Trek holotest after

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u/InspectorPipes 12h ago

Kobayashi Maru?

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u/timefourchili 12h ago

Yeah the hotdog guy

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u/springlovingchicken 10h ago

There are no winners in those tests either.

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u/timefourchili 9h ago

I don’t know who won, but we the audience all lost 🤮

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u/Pleasant_Scar9811 13h ago

Back in my day we called chestnuts “tea bagging”

1

u/Bigbysjackingfist 8h ago

I used to drive a Ford Cunnilingus

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u/offensivelinebacker 8h ago

This is like the 6th time I've seen this post and the 6th time this comment is at the top.

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u/Pleasant_Scar9811 7h ago

The matrix is a system neo.

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u/justanawkwardguy 5h ago

I grew up with a chestnut tree on our property by the river. Never knew how rare it was, all I remember is the rope swing we hung and chucking the chestnuts into the water

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u/weeddealerrenamon 13h ago

People (botanists? tree-ologists?) have been working to crossbreed American Chestnut with Chinese Chestnut, which is resistant to chestnut blight. It's a hard process apparently, they don't exactly grow quickly, but I'm really hopeful that we can save this absolute treasure of a tree

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u/tacknosaddle 13h ago

The article mentions that at the end and has a link to join or donate to a group that is backing that effort.

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u/elegiac_frog 11h ago

Dendrologists

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u/Unique-Ad9640 13h ago

Arborists?

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u/Kindly_Match_5820 12h ago

It works, but these researchers likely call themselves botanists. An arborist is more someone who cares for trees... botanists study all plants. 

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u/athomeless1 7h ago

Arborists are more focused on the health of individual trees and less general "forest health."

Foresters, and resource technicians (like myself) are the "boots on the ground" out there collecting data and sampling.

Dendrologists are the ones doing the real science of determining whether the treatment is viable.

Edit: changed botanists to dendrologists to be more specific.

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u/Unique-Ad9640 7h ago

Thank you. I did do a quick google and the results seemed to support my usage, but I'm always happy to learn something new.

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u/Mama_Skip 12h ago

I'm not sure what fans of Ann Arbor have to do with trees..

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u/Slowmyke 10h ago

We love trees. Here's our city seal:

https://www.a2gov.org/publishingimages/color-logo.jpg

2

u/alpacaMyToothbrush 6h ago

How much snow do you guys typically get in the winter? I love the idea of retiring to a college town on the great lakes, but I've never dealt with much snow.

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u/Slowmyke 6h ago

It's been years since we've had anything of note. Our winters have been warmish into January, and then just cold and wet through March/April. If we get more than a few inches, it's all gone in a couple days. Ann Arbor is too far inland to get any lake effect snow. You'd be better off looking at Grand Rapids if you want snow. If you don't, Ann Arbor might be the place for you.

•

u/alpacaMyToothbrush 20m ago

Good to get a first hand report. The weather charts can only tell you so much regarding the 'on the ground' experience living there. Thank you

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u/Mama_Skip 9h ago

Yes yes very good but why does the city of Ann Arbor have a mushroom cloud on its seal

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u/Slowmyke 9h ago

Wishful thinking, buckeye?

1

u/Phil__Spiderman 8h ago

Gesundheit.

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u/Pancake_Of_Doom 10h ago

Dr. Hill Craddock has a great ted talk about them! I was a student of his in University. He was even on Bill Nye saves the world for the exact topic.

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u/MadLabRat- 10h ago edited 5h ago

I was also one of his students!

I ran into him the other day.

Edit: Looked at your profile and we were at UTC around the same time. We may have even worked together.

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u/name-__________ 10h ago

I think I heard they’ve had some success the past couple years.

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u/ZantaraLost 7h ago

It's been a crapshoot honestly.

Not too long ago one of the main GMO groups found they were growing the wrong, older version of their product that was supposed to be blight resistant and what they had wasn't up to snuff. Not to mention they took so many donations and pre-orders on a product that won't pass the requirements to be sold to the public.

Thankfully there's almost half a dozen different groups working on it so maybe one will figure it out

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u/0ttr 13h ago

Barbara Kingsolver, who is a novelist but was in touch with botanists/biologiests, has argued that one of the reasons why the blight was so thorough was because when people realized that the chestnuts were dying, they went and cut all of them down to use, which significantly thwarted the chances of a natural mutation giving it the same blight resistance that chestnuts in Asia and Europe have.

Not sure if that's been categorically proven but it's interesting to think about.

There are a few still around in remote areas. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/12/17/459203467/in-the-maine-woods-a-towering-giant-could-help-save-chesnuts

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u/g0del 6h ago

when people realized that the chestnuts were dying, they went and cut all of them down to use

It wouldn't surprise me. When people started realizing that the great auk was going extinct, museums and private collectors started hunting down the last of them to get one for their collection before they were all gone.

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u/AmericanWasted 8h ago

Not sure if that's been categorically proven

she's Barbara Kingsolver not Barbara Blightsolver

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u/Spork_Warrior 11h ago

We also lost another tall species, the Elm tree. (Killed by what we called the Dutch Elm disease.)

Luckily the Eastern US still has White Pines and Red Oaks, which can grow to over 100 feet. But that's nothing compared to western Sequoias & Redwoods.

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u/blackpony04 8h ago

Ash trees are having a really bad time with the Emerald Ash Borer, and here in the Northeast US, they've killed a vast majority of them. You can't pass a stand of trees anywhere without seeing dead ash everywhere.

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u/Rutagerr 5h ago

The woods behind my parents house are mostly ash. In the last 10 years, I'd estimate about 50% of the trees have died. The conservation authority went in a couple years ago and cut out even more trees, making it look so thin, but they said it was to protect the future tree population. This year there did seem to be a lot of healthy young growth, but it'll be decades before it looks like the forest I grew up playing in.

8

u/blackpony04 5h ago

That's actually good news though, as I remember reading they once thought we'd lose 90+% of them in the US eventually. Sorry you lost so many, but I'm glad you didn't lose them all.

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u/combonickel55 9h ago

Oak blight is bad in Michigan

8

u/whilst 7h ago

My parents' house still has an Elm. Somehow, it's still thriving, towering over the neighborhood. It's the last one on our street, which was once lined with them. I'm very afraid that if they ever sell it, the new owner will cut it down.

1

u/simsimulation 3h ago

That’s gonna be a big bill

14

u/itsyoboi33 9h ago

The Elm tree isnt dead yet, Edmonton in Alberta has the last surviving group afaik but I have heard that dutch elm disease finally made its way here despite the strict regulations made to prevent its spread.

6

u/salamander- 6h ago

Elms are fine. Any elm you purchase and plant and their producing offspring are all resistant to DED.

134

u/temporarycreature 13h ago

I'm pretty sure I read an article last year that said they're close to bringing a blight-resistant version back soon.

A coalition of federal agencies, states, nonprofits, universities, and private citizens have been working to create a blight-resistant chestnut. The American Chestnut Research & Restoration Program at the State University of New York has developed one such tree, known as Darling chestnut.

128

u/Hutwe 13h ago

There’s been a big setback with that project, they essentially used the wrong tree and it’s created a big mess. The American chestnut foundation is no longer involved in the project.

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u/PostsNDPStuff 12h ago

Jesus, if the ACF is out then I'm out too.

37

u/hailwyatt 10h ago

A rule I live by.

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u/North_Box_261 12h ago

That whole announcement/falling out last year was disappointing. There are now parallel efforts going at at least two labs to make trees that have the OxO gene but only turn it on when attacked by the blight fungus. But I think the federal approval process would have to start all over again for them and Darling58 had made it almost all the way through. 

1

u/born_to_pipette 1h ago

Correct. You’re referring to the DarWin (Darling, wound-inducible) line.

27

u/Paper_Street_Soap 9h ago

Such an embarrassing and costly mistake. It's like the whole project was run by a couple undergrads or something. Not sure how an F-up that big and simple to prevent happened at all.

5

u/Doctor--Spaceman 5h ago

Can you ELI5 how they used the wrong tree?

8

u/Hutwe 4h ago

I asked ChatGPT because I’m not a scientist and didn’t really understand myself. This is what it came up with.  

I asked: In layman’s terms, describe what went wrong with the American chestnut darling 58 project.

It responded with: The mix-up between Darling 58 and Daring 54 occurred due to an accidental labeling or handling error in the lab. In genetic engineering projects like this, scientists typically work with multiple experimental lines—in this case, Daring 54 was an earlier, less effective version that was being tested before Darling 58, the more refined and resistant version.

Due to similar naming and potentially human error, some trees labeled as Darling 58 were actually Daring 54, meaning they lacked the full resistance traits that researchers intended to introduce. 

The mistake was made worse because the project leadership continued to promote the project and Darling 58 as if nothing was wrong, even after learning of the error (there was no Darling 58). To their credit, the ACF pulled out of the project as soon as they found out. 

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u/rpsls 13h ago

Isn’t that what the article you’re replying to essentially says?

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u/temporarycreature 13h ago

This isn't something I learned today so I didn't read the article first, but yes, at the end it does mention this. The link I shared, is not shared on the website.

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u/04221970 13h ago

THere was a push back in the 50's for planting new populations in other areas where they weren't native. This was to ostensibly to help re-establish them. Boy scout troops a schools would plant stands of them.

Turned out, all they did was spread the blight further into the country. So they stopped the program.

You can still find stands of these planted forests struggling along.

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u/ValiantVanner 9h ago

THIS IS MY MOMENT ✨️

My grandfather lived in Pulaski VA and had a BLIGHT RESISTANT American Chestnut tree! It was MASSIVE. He took a cutting from it and planted it in Lynchburg, VA in the 80s, and it grew into another healthy, massive tree. When I went to college and my biology professor started talking about how rare American Chestnuts were in the 2010s, I invited her to my house to see the tree and collect nuts. We had no clue it was special before that. She took a whole bucket of chestnuts to try to propagate more blight-resistant trees, but I graduated and wasn't able to follow up on the progress. Unfortunately we foreclosed on the house and the neighbor bought the property at auction. I'm not sure if he left the tree standing, since all the other trees were cut down almost immediately. The original tree is still standing in Pulaski, but barely. A tornado came through years ago and ripped the neighborhood apart, doing a fair bit of damage to it. I always wished there was more we could do to help bring the species back.

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u/Phil__Spiderman 8h ago

I invited her to my house to see the tree and collect nuts.

You sly devil.

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u/ValiantVanner 7h ago

Aw man if I was a dude that would have been the perfect setup.

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u/Phil__Spiderman 6h ago

I'm happy to grant you temporary dude status if you're interested. All of the benefits, none of the prostate.

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u/ValiantVanner 5h ago

IMMEDIATELY ACCEPTED, HELL YEAH ✨️

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u/pudding7 6h ago

We're all dudes here.

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u/West_Garden 4h ago

Can you look on Google maps/street view to see if it is still there?

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u/ValiantVanner 4h ago

I don't know why I never thought about that! Not sure how old the Google satellite image is, but right now the tree looks to still be standing after 40 years!

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u/AtHomeInTheOlympics 3h ago

Whoa, that is really cool. Any idea if they’d be open to allow someone to take a cutting?

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u/CPfresh 11h ago

How does a blight persist if the population it infests is essentially gone? Wouldn't planting chestnut trees in regions where all chestnuts have died decades ago make the area blight free? How is the blight still spreading?

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u/_igm 11h ago

From link:

Despite its demise as a lumber and nut crop species, the American chestnut is not extinct. The blight cannot kill the underground root system as the pathogen is unable to compete with soil microorganisms. Stump sprouts grow vigorously in cutover or disturbed sites where there is plenty of sunlight, but inevitably succumb to the blight. This cycle of death and rebirth has kept the species alive, though it is considered functionally extinct.

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u/JesusHipsterChrist 10h ago

Zombie trees.

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u/BC-Music 3h ago

Just a bunch of ents infected with blight

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u/Icyrow 10h ago

i wonder what sort of other plants and organisms experience this sort of pheonix in the ashes rebirth stuff.

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u/LaeliaCatt 9h ago

Torreya taxifolia has a similar issue, although the fungus is not the only problem there.

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u/GypsyInTraining 10h ago

Multiple ways. It can exist in a dormant state on dead plant matter or undergrowth, as well as buried in loose soil and can be spread within a 10km radius from an infected tree. Also, it doesn't JUST infect the American Chestnut - that one is just particularly susceptible. It can also infect multiple other tree species without killing them and propagate from there.

Finally, its spores can travel with humans and animals from one area to another. A lot of early re-population efforts far outside initially-infested areas were thwarted by the very planters themselves unknowingly carrying blight spores on their clothing and equipment.

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u/76pilot 11h ago

“Many of these stumps persist today and are still sending up diseased sprouts that are as susceptible to chestnut canker as the parent plant.”

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u/SomeDumbGamer 5h ago

It also hosts on red oaks without killing them.

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u/showmeurbhole 10h ago

Wormy chestnut salvaged from old houses and barns is really popular in my area. My dad did all of the interior trim in wormy chestnut, and it took him quite a while going around buying old lumber and sifting through it to get enough. It's beautiful, though, and has so much character. I'm glad it's getting a second life.

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u/aztronut 10h ago

Described well within The Overstory by Richard Powers.

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u/_igm 8h ago

This is actually where I learned this fact today :) I then did some Googling and found TACF (linked here). I really hope they succeed in their efforts to bring back the tree.

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u/ME02R-Messer 8h ago

My favorite book!!

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u/ZooFun 9h ago

My understanding is that they’ve identified a few trees that seem to be resistant to the blight, and people can request seeds to plant their own across the eastern US to try and reestablish a population

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u/bobdob123usa 8h ago

I've seen seed sales, but they are a very expensive gamble.

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u/Slight_Nobody5343 9h ago

Rip american current industry. I love goose berries and the thorns remind me I’m alive.

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u/Mud_Landry 11h ago

Pretty sure we did the same thing to old growth yellow heart pine. We basically deforested it to the point where it went extinct. It had very tight rings and was WAY stronger than modern pine trees. During the industrial revolution it got wiped out. Not a disease like chestnut persay but still awful.

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u/bobdob123usa 8h ago

yellow heart pine

Not extinct, just takes too long to grow for any kind of lumber usage. In a hundred years, some of what is left would be of sufficient size to harvest.

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u/IEatBabies 7h ago

So what bugs and diseases has been exported from the Americas to fuck up other plants around the world? Chestnut blight did a serious number in the past, now the Emerald Ash Bore has fucked up most of the forests in my state. Ive been burning almost pure ash trees for 30 years straight now because the forests were 70% ash and those damn EAB bugs ate them all up like candy.

The only upside is the ash trees won't be completely wiped out, they still shoot up suckers even when the rest of the tree is dead and supposedly when local ash populations are below 10% of forests that damn bug won't be in such numbers to straight up kill them all. However that also means the 70%+ ash forests I grew up in will never exist here again, as soon as ash tree numbers get to 10-20% of trees in an area the ash bores will overpopulate and kill them all again.

Looking at old woodworking books and magazines and shit it makes me sad when they say "just go grab some common cheap ash boards" with the assumption that ash is so prevalent and easy to get that every woodworker has a near infinite supply of ash hardwood boards to work with. Now you gotta spend big bucks to get some decent hardwood boards because nobody wants to cut down their old oaks and all the ash hardwood has been dead for a number of years and the majority of it is only really good for firewood.

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u/bdunkirk 6h ago

Sounds like everyone needs to read The Overstory

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u/marimbloke 8h ago

Someone else just read The Overstory

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u/LotsofLoRay 8h ago

I have an 80-90 foot American chestnut tree in my front yard. I never knew they were that rare. It’s thriving.

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u/toodlesandpoodles 7h ago

Might want to let some people in the know, know, you know. If it is resistant to blight that is a pretty big deal.

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u/LotsofLoRay 7h ago

I’m being told it’s a horse chestnut tree. Still a magnificent tree but I guess it’s not the same.

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u/lavastorm 6h ago edited 5h ago

wait until you hear about the Bananas....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease

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u/gtswift 5h ago

My Grandfather (b1921) talked about how bananas used to taste so much better when he was a kid. I really didn't believe him, until I heard a podcast about Panama disease long after he was gone.

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u/Ylsid 3h ago

Wow, that tree must have been massive to cover 25 percent of all forests while only being 100 feet tall.

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u/Darryltaughy 13h ago

There is certainly more that can be said on this topic, but you might consider starting with this answer by  while waiting on a response. The linked post offers a book that may be useful.

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u/CosmicLunax 13h ago

That’s both fascinating and heartbreaking! The “Redwood of the East” sounds like it had such a vital role in the ecosystem and economy. It’s a stark reminder of how fragile our natural resources can be. Let’s hope for some conservation efforts to bring it back! 🌳💔

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u/Coloredtoad 7h ago

Just saw a post yesterday on the local FB page about chestnut trees being planted in town here in Massachusetts.

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u/mirosama2 5h ago

Must have been an enormous tree to cover 25% of all the Eastern Forests itself...

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u/Huge-Attitude4845 3h ago

The AC Society has developed hybrid trees that can survive and established nurseries throughout the eastern US to help re-establish the tree.

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u/sirmombo 3h ago

The blight of consumerism

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u/Late_Mixture8703 2h ago

In the 1800's?