Housatonic Heritage Hike visits American Chestnut orchard

FALLS VILLAGE — Ellery “Woods” Sinclair led a Housatonic Heritage hike at the American chestnut grove on Undermountain Road in Falls Village on Sunday, Sept. 15. About 15 people attended, most of whom Sinclair greeted by name.

Sinclair gave some necessary background. At the turn of the 20th century, about 4 billion American chestnut trees stood within the eastern forests.

But a different chestnut tree from China and Japan was introduced in the U.S. in the late 19th century, and it brought a disease with it.

A fungus (Chryphonectria parasitica) was first identified at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in 1904. The disease, known as the “chestnut blight,” spread rapidly and by 1950 the American chestnut was almost extinct.

In the 1930s, scientists began to crossbreed American chestnuts with Chinese chestnuts that had developed immunity to the fungus. After four generations of the crossbreeding, a seed was produced that has 15/16ths American chestnut genetics and is resistant to the blight.

In 2007, these hybrid seeds were planted at the orchard in Falls Village by a group including Sinclair, Star Childs of Great Mountain Forest, and HVRHS teacher Mark Burdick and his students.

There are about 300 chestnut trees in the orchard. As they mature, they are intentionally inoculated with the fungus to test for resistance. Samples of trees that demonstrate survivability are sent to The American Chestnut Foundation for further testing.

Trees that do not demonstrate resistance are removed.

Sinclair said the American chestnut was a very useful tree. It was used for timber and furniture. The nutritious and delicious nuts, which covered the forest floor, were eaten by everything — deer, bears, birds, squirrels and people.

He also noted that poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was wrong when he wrote of “a spreading chestnut tree” in “The Village Blacksmith.”

“That was a horse chestnut!”

Jack Swatt, president of the Connecticut chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, was on hand. He said with recent advances in genetic science, researchers can be even more particular about which hybrids they keep.

“We feel that we’re a decade or two away” from having mostly American, blight-resistant chestnut trees in the forest, not just in controlled environments.