Chestnuts

One of the great environmental disasters in the U.S. in the 20th century was the elimination of the chestnut tree from eastern hardwood forests. It was the most common tree in many of these forests and upward of 25 percent of the trees throughout the region. So to lose that, as well as the key role it played in the ecosystem for bears and other animals, was a real disaster. There’s long been attempts to revive the chestnut through grafting Asian versions to it. Those have gone far enough that it is possible they may be reintroduced to forests soon, although these more Asian trees are far smaller than the big American version. But in an era of broader ecological collapse, including the disappearance of elm, ash, and hemlock from large swaths of forests due to invasive insects and diseases, there’s no “natural ecosystem” to leave alone. Everything is impacted by humans and if humans can do something to create a more healthy forest instead of their usual destructive impacts, well, I have trouble seeing an argument against it.

In any case, this is an interesting discovery from North Carolina of some intact American chestnuts growing on Cherokee lands.

During the summer of 2021, Tribal Reserve was surveyed for reproductively mature American chestnut (Tilĭ΄, Castanea dentata) trees. The survey supports a larger collaborative effort between the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) Natural Resources Department and The American Chestnut Foundation to restore this culturally significant tree to the Qualla Boundary (see the Cherokee One Feather Oct. 12, 2020 edition for more information about this collaboration). The Cherokee people have had a relationship with Tilĭ for thousands of years—a relationship that continues today with the making of chestnut bread every fall (though, Chinese chestnuts, Castanea mollissima, have mostly replaced American chestnuts in the recipe).

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Jaime Van Leuven, field naturalist and then graduate research assistant at the University of Vermont (UVM), was hired by the EBCI Natural Resources Department to conduct the survey due to her background in plant biology and her experience with field surveys. Josh Istvan, EBCI GIS specialist, helped create a map of Tribal Reserve to facilitate Van Leuven’s search. Members of the EBCI Fisheries & Wildlife Management Program – specifically Dallas Bradley, Micah Walker, Caleb Hickman, Nicholas Reed, and Jessica Nagel – oriented Van Leuven to the roads and trails.

Van Leuven consulted the literature, the EBCI Natural Resources Department, community members, her committee at UVM, and ecology professionals in the area about likely places to find American chestnut within the reserve. In the 20 days spent surveying the reserve, Jaime found eleven reproductively mature American chestnut trees. Consequently, these trees could play a role in the American chestnut restoration effort in the Qualla Boundary.

Finding mature American chestnut trees can help restore this culturally significant tree to Tribal land in a number of ways. First, finding mature trees indicates places within Tribal Reserve with beneficial growing conditions for American chestnut; these places may represent ideal locations for restoration plantings. Second, previous research has found that trees surviving into maturity may have some low-level resistance to the blight; pollen from these trees could be collected and preserved so that the trees’ genetics could one day be part of a breeding program—such as that conducted by The American Chestnut Foundation. Nuts from surviving trees could also be collected for propagation in the EBCI’s chestnut orchard which is another way to preserve desirable traits such as potential low-level resistance to the blight (see the Cherokee One Feather Oct 27, 2021 edition for more information about the chestnut orchard).

I mean, 11 trees aren’t a lot but the fact that there are any is ecologically quite important.