Continued growth at chestnut grove

FALLS VILLAGE — Ellery “Woods” Sinclair led a Housatonic Heritage hike at the American chestnut grove on Undermountain Road in Falls Village on Saturday, Sept. 21.

With stragglers, about 35 people attended.

Each autumn the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area celebrates the history and natural resources of the Tri-state region with paddling and cycling events, history tours and hikes.

“Hike” in this case is a bit of a misnomer. It was more of a talk, followed by a walk among the chestnut trees, which are really starting to fill out.

The orchard was started in 2007, with help from Housatonic Valley Regional High School students led by teacher Dave Moran.

The land was donated by Great Mountain Forest, and the project overseen by the Connecticut chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation. Great Mountain is a not-for-profit working forest on the border between Falls Village and Norfolk that focuses on conservation and education.

The idea behind the chestnut forest is to breed a blight-resistant hybrid of American and Chinese chestnut trees by cross-pollinating the nuts and methodically adjusting the ratio until achieving a tree that is 15/16ths American chestnut.

Sinclair spoke at length about the American chestnut, emphasizing its importance to the economy of 18th- and 19th-century America. The wood was hard and straight, and was used for construction, for telephone poles and ships’ masts, and for anything that was intended to last.

The nuts themselves provided an important source of nourishment for people and for wildlife. And the nuts fell in such abundance that contemporary accounts described the situation as “knee-deep.”

The tree had an enormous range, from Maine to northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

The American chestnut era ended when the chestnut blight began around the turn of the 20th century. First identified at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 1909, the blight wiped out 40 percent of American chestnuts.

Sinclair, a retired teacher at Housatonic Valley Regional High School who was instrumental in helping to start the chestnut grove here, said it is believed that the blight was introduced to the U.S. via the importation of chestnut trees, for ornamental purposes, from China and Japan in the late 19th century (although he noted that Thomas Jefferson had imported such trees much earlier).

“There’s a lesson here,” said Sinclair. “Watch out for these invasives.”

Sinclair said there are isolated examples of surviving American chestnut trees, with specimens found on Mount Riga and Lincoln City Road in Salisbury, on Canaan Mountain and in Sharon.