I'm with the Alabama chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation. The TACF has
an
MOU (memorandum of understanding) with the US Forest Service for restoration of
the
American chestnut back into the national forests using hybrid (1/16 chinese)
trees
selected for blight resistance but otherwise with American chestnut
characteristics.

Throwbacks can happen, so work is underway to stablize the genes.

Large wild-growing American chestnuts still exist and are occasionally found in
their
native range. Here in Alabama we've located a blight-free 65-70 foot tree with a
12" DBH
in the Talladega National Forest. It apparently has survived because it is a
"loner", that is,
no other American chestnuts are close enough to pollinate it (or transfer blight
to it), so it
produces only unfertilized nut embryos in the burs. Other trees up to 40 feet
tall are
known in AL. TN and some other state chapters have identified a few large trees,
and all
are loners.

Generally speaking, if you plant a pure American chestnut seed or seedling, it
will grow for
3 to 5 years before getting blighted and then dying back to the root. The root
will resprout
and the cycle will continue for a few cycles. This is true within the native
range (east of the
Mississippi River), but doesn't apply so much to areas west of the Mississippi.
Paul Sisco
with the TACF told me that the largest American chestnut he'd ever seen was in
the far
northwest and had been planted by pioneers from the east.

Several factors affect survivability: other diseases (ink disease on roots is
common), pests
(gall wasps and Japanese beetles will damage the tree, while ants help transport
the
blight), animals (deer browsing young trees, etc), physical effects (soil pH and
nutrients,
drought, high winds, water-saturated soil, etc).

Les Tate
==========

--- In American_Chestnut_Trees_and_Hybrids@yahoogroups.com, "Jill Hamell"
<jarrha@w...> wrote:
>.... 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.
>