> Hi, I am new to the group but damn glad to be a part of it! I have
> always been fascinated by Chestnut trees and I have also wanted to
> know; if one were to very carefully manage a small acreage in the
> former range of these mighty trees, would it be possible to grow
> saplings and raise them to maturity, or is Chestnut blight simply to
> pervasive and widespread at this point? Thanks!!--John.

Hi, John,
The blight is still out there. If you are within the former range, odds are
your local woodlands still contain live rootstock which keeps sending up
shoots which survive some number of years, and then are hit by blight
again.

However, don't give up. There is a group which has been breeding pure
American Chestnut stock for blight resistance, and they've been making good
headway. They are called the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation or
ACCF (http://www.accf-online.org/). Years back, they started colecting
material from the many scattered "survivor trees" - pure American Chestnuts
that contracted blight, but fought it off. These trees exist, but are so
scattered that they could not cross-polinate and reproduce on their own.
In crossing these trees, they were recently getting about one in ten with
blight resistance (which is the ability to form a raised, non-lethal
canker, rather than the normal sunken one that kills the tree). A couple of
years ago thinned their orchards of the trees that didn't seem to be
effectively transmitting resistance, and are hoping to get much better
rates of resistance out of the current nut crops. (You can get nuts or
seedlings from them.) One of their growers, or "cooperators" (that's what
you'll be if you participate) turned up a tree - in his first batch of
seedlings! - that has displayed an unheard of level of blight resistance,
fighting off blight for the first time when it was pencil-thin. Even the
Asians usually die when they contract blight that young, but this tree has
thrived and grown vigorously. (Look at
http://www.accf-online.org/nathanblight.htm, and
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/1436/ .) Anyway, a fully blight
resistance pure American Chestnut seems within reach, and your assistance
can help make it happen. (And also make you the first on your block with
full-sized American Chestnuts! :-)

There is another group that has been working to restore the chestnut,
namely The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF). They are much better known
than ACCF . However, they are using quite a different approach to achieve
the same goal. They are outcrossing to Asians, then repeatedly crossing
back to Americans with an eye to retaining blight resistance but getting
all other American traits. I think that, given that the ACCF approach
promises to be successful, it is preferable to the TACF one. Aside from
lingering concerns about the potential for "throwback" Asian traits
cropping up in TACF trees (which they deny can happen, and I'm not
qualified to comment on), I expect that their trees will face some legal
barriers in future restoration work on public lands in that their legal
status as a native tree will be open to question. The ACCF trees will not
face such obstacles, nor will there be any reason for concern, justified or
not, that non-American traits might appear down the road.

Anyway, take a look at the ACCF site and let us know what you think!
Good luck,
Jill