American Chestnut
11/14/2006
A formal ceremony to replant a small grove of Chestnut trees will be
held at North Asheboro Park on Canoy Drive on Friday, Nov. 17.
The program will begin at 2:30 p.m. and will include remarks by the
mayor of Asheboro and Robert McCrory, arbor supervisor at the N.C.
Zoo. The group will plant three trees in the park and two trees
at the mayor’s grove there. Six children from Balfour Elementary School
in Asheboro will help with the planting.The group will then move to the
Asheboro Farmers Market on Church St. to plant two more chestnut trees
at about 3:30 p.m. Six children from the local Boys and Girls
Club will assist with that planting.
The ceremonies will commemorate one of America’s most important
ecological disasters: the near loss of the American Chestnut Tree
Once known as the “Redwood of the East” because of its spectacular
size, the American Chestnut Tree supported the ecology of eastern
forest and the economy of the pioneers who swarmed through these
woodlands into the 1800s.
Until the early 20th century, American Chestnut trees dominated forests
from Maine southward to northern Florida and westward to the Ohio
Valley. The average American Chestnut tree grew to a diameter of 60
inches, but the really old, really staunch trees could reach a girth of
8 to 10 feet and could stand as tall as 100 feet. These grand old trees
blanketed almost all of the Appalachian Mountain chain and supplied the
wood pioneers needed to build their homes, fences, poles, caskets and
other artifacts.
Around 1904, someone noticed a fungus growing on a few American
Chestnut trees in New York City. Introduced from the Orient, and
commonly called "Chestnut blight," this fungus swept across the eastern
United States, killing nearly every American Chestnut Tree on Earth. In
the short span of only 60 years, the fungus destroyed more than
99.99 percent of the American Chestnut Tree population. The death toll
claimed almost four billion trees on some nine million acres of eastern
forests.
Today, the N.C. Zoo and other conservation groups such as Trees
Asheboro and the American Chestnut Foundation, are working to bring
back the American Chestnut by crossbreeding it with Chestnut species
that are resistant to the Chestnut blight. Conservation groups are
planting the hybrid, resistant trees throughout the former range of the
American Chestnut.
“Anything that we can do to try to bring back something that has been
on the verge of extinction or on the verge of disappearing completely
from the world is a great step in the conservation of our natural
world,” McCrory said.
|
|
|
