2021年10月21日 · The tree is not technically extinct since the blight fungus does not kill the tree’s root system underground. But although the tree sends up sprouts that grow well, it ends up dying back to the ground soon afterward.

However, the stump sprouts rarely reach more than 6 m (20 ft) in height before blight infection returns, so the species is classified as functionally extinct [63] since the chestnut blight only actively kills the above ground portion of the American chestnut tree, leaving behind the below-ground components such as the root systems.

2019年4月29日 · Mature American chestnuts have been virtually extinct for decades. The tree’s demise started with something called ink disease in the early 1800s, which steadily killed chestnut in the southern portion of its range. The final blow happened at the turn of the 20th century when a disease called chestnut blight swept through Eastern forests.

2024年5月3日 · More than a century ago, the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was a common overstory tree across portions of eastern North American forests. These giants thrived on moist, well drained slopes and ridges across the Appalachians, towering more than 100 feet tall with an average diameter at breast height (DBH) of five to eight feet.

2024年8月1日 · KENTUCKY—American chestnut once spanned more than 200 million acres from Maine to Georgia and as far west as the Mississippi River. Exotic pests from Asia, notably the chestnut blight, decimated it about 100 years ago. Today, The American Chestnut Foundation is working to return this tree to its former glory.

2024年1月24日 · The American chestnut tree population from Maine to Alabama was wiped out in just fifty years. Chestnut trees in Michigan stand tall against extinction. For most living today, the memory of the chestnut lives only in the first line of the popular Christmas Song made famous by Nat King Cole in 1946. The song was released just a few years before ...

2015年7月22日 · Before Emerald Ash Borer and before Dutch Elm Disease, an extremely lethal tree pathogen found its way to North America: chestnut blight. This fungus was unintentionally introduced from Asia around 1904, and was first detected killing chestnut trees in …

The infamous chestnut blight was responsible for the death of nearly three billion trees in the eastern United States. The country was inoculated with the deadly fungus around 1903 due to a nursery of infected Asiatic chestnut trees being imported into New York City.

2023年4月14日 · Today, the American chestnut is functionally extinct. The trees were wiped out in a blight in the first half of the 20th century. But they once blanketed the East Coast, providing food, fuel and building materials across 200 million acres from Maine to …

2021年10月26日 · The most promising hope for the American chestnut now is probably transgenic — the development of a genetically modified tree. Scientists are trying to engineer a tree that is as close to an American chestnut as possible, with just enough genetic material from the Chinese chestnut to resist the blight.