Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 1, 1993 TAG: 9307010241
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ARCADIA LENGTH: Medium
It wouldn't look like much to most of us.
A round brown thing, about the size of a peach with needle-sharp spikes sticking out, lying along a gravel road deep in the Jefferson National Forest.
But to Henry Heckler, finding it last fall meant that a mature American chestnut was somewhere nearby, the spiky thing its seed.
He found two trees, as it turns out, both hearty specimens of the chestnuts that once reigned in the Eastern forests but now are all but extinct after a blight ravaged the species decades ago.
Although young American chestnuts are common, sprouting from dead stumps and reaching about 10 feet, it's rare to find trees this big - 40 feet with bases about 18 inches in diameter - that produce lots of nuts.
"What's even more rare is it's right on the road," said Heckler, a member of the nonprofit American Chestnut Foundation. "Yeah, this is like, super rare. So we'll be able to work them real hard."
The work began last week, when Heckler placed waxed paper bags around 98 burs, the female flowers, of the two trees in an eastern corner of Botetourt County.
Wednesday morning, Heckler drove to the post office to pick up a special-delivery package - a dozen anthers, the male parts, in a shoe box from a breeding farm near Abingdon.
Then Heckler and four other volunteers did a little tinkering to help Mother Nature along.
In technical terms, it's called artificial pollination. Out in the woods, it's called devotion to bringing back the American chestnut.
They combated swarms of gnats and a fear of heights as they climbed tall ladders and gently rubbed the anthers over the burs, wrapping the bags back on the branches.
"I'd rather breed a tree that's closer to the ground," Ginny Webb shouted from 20 feet up.
The male parts contain blight-resistant genes from a sister species, the Chinese chestnut. The two American chestnuts have survived on Little Harkening Hill for perhaps 25 years - for reasons still unknown.
It might be something in the local genetics, Heckler said, or the trees might have the virus that attacks the blight-causing fungus.
"We're not real sure how any of that works right now," said Heckler, a member of the nonprofit American Chestnut Foundation.
Laurie Spangler, who works with the Explore Park and Mill Mountain Zoo in forestry and wildlife management, was concerned that the pollen wasn't sticking to the burs.
"I guess it's just something we can't see happening," she said.
Heckler said the day's work may yield 80 nuts, which will be planted at Explore next spring. After five years, the saplings will be zapped with the blight to see if they survive.
"It's a wonderful teaching mechanism, and also a real good learning experience for the kids," said Webb, Explore's education programs coordinator.
Explore has a stand of different chestnuts - American, Chinese and hybrids of the two. The trees are crossbred to get mostly American genes, with a dash of blight-resistant Chinese genes.
The American chestnut used to range from Maine to Georgia and as far west as Indiana, making up 25 percent of the forests. Appalachian ridges often were solid chestnut, the trees' long, creamy flowers appearing like snow from a distance.
Some trees towered 100 feet above the forest floor where bear, deer, turkey and other animals foraged for the chestnuts, also valued as a cash crop.
The American chestnut grows taller and straighter than the Chinese kind and yields better, rot-resistant timber for housing, furniture, fence posts and musical instruments.
The American Chestnut Foundation received a $6,000 grant from a North Carolina benefactor for this project and will stretch that over five years to plant 200 nuts annually, Heckler said.
He hopes eventually to plant a breeding farm, like the one in Abingdon, every 100 miles along the Appalachian Mountains to reinstate the American chestnut in the Eastern forests.
Will he ever see a full-grown chestnut forest? Probably not, he said, but "we can get a good start. They grow pretty fast."
by CNB