A while ago, a friend of mine, who was the head arborist for Mass Electric came over with a project for me to mill out.

He has retired from Mass Electric but is also involved with the American Chestnut Society. And he had a couple of pieces of chestnut logs, for me to mill up into some boards to make ceremonially plaques for the Society.

During our conversations he informed me of the societies works and what's going on to restore the American Chestnut to the forests of USA.

Here is what I know, as of this date.

They have been cross breeding American Chestnut with a Chinese Chestnut which is blight resistant. The take the nuts from a tree and grow some new trees until they are about 10 years old. Then the expose them to the blight.

About 90% or more of these trees die from the blight.

The take nuts from the surviving trees and cross breed them with American chestnut, to reduce the amount of Chinese chestnut in the offspring.

Grow these trees for 10 years or so, and blight them again.
And continue the process.

As of the latest news they are on the third generation of crossing back to American Chestnut and when they are up to six generation they say the tree will be blight resistant.

The also have figured out that this process has to be region specific. What that means is you can't take a new American Chestnut tree from MA to GA and expect it to live in that area. And the same bringing one from GA to MA.

So there are members of the society doing this in every region. He told me that in New England, between MA and RI there are 28 sites growing trees to do this cross breeding.

We may not see the full restoration of this tree in our lifetime, but it's on it's way back.

He also said some of the 3rd generation trees may survive already. They don't know for sure.

I hope you find this encouraging news.....

Jim Rogers