American Chestnut Guide: Everything We Know About The “Perfect” Tree

Why Is the American Chestnut “Functionally Extinct?” American Chestnut Blight

Researchers use the term functionally extinct to describe the threat level of the American Chestnut tree because although there are a few million wild trees in existence, these trees rarely reach maturity.

The invasive fungus prevents the saplings (many of which still grow from the root systems of the old growth trees) from developing normally.

The sole salvation for the tree is its extensive root system which is still present in most of Appalachia. In fact, most new shoots come from the old root systems.

Basically, the fungus that attacks these trees gives off a chemical that kills the cells. Then, the dead tissue is consumed.

However, scientists have discovered and identified a gene, present in bananas and wheat, that produces an enzyme that neutralizes the deadly acid.

Now, a few Chestnuts have been tested with the gene-editing solution and are beginning to be reproduced.

These trees won’t be planted in the wild until FDA regulations approve the measure (which was requested in 2020 and is due for decision this year).

Why Is the American Chestnut Tree Considered “Perfect?” Castanea dentata

For centuries, the royal American Chestnut trees grew tall and healthy while providing wood and food to millions of people and numerous bird and animal species.

The 100-foot tall known as The Redwood of the East was also named the Perfect Tree.

They grew quickly and provided nourishing chestnuts for animals and people.

Their wood—rot resistant and straight-grained was perfect for constructing homes, furniture, barns, and fences and incredibly easy to mill.

Then, around 1895, an invasive fungus traveled from overseas, one that attached itself to ornamental and blight-resistant Chinese Chestnut trees.

Within forty years, that fungus destroyed four billion of the majestic trees.

American Chestnut Tree Growth Stages and Historical Value

By most considerations, the American Chestnut was a perfect tree.

Rot-resistant, massive and fast-growing, it was easily transformed for commercial purposes.

It resprouted quickly and was ready for logging twenty years later. So, the growth stages were swift from seed to maturity.

The tree’s wide branches created a spacious canopy that filtered the sun and helped create a layered and diverse forest below.

Its acorn-size and sweet nuts fed deer, squirrels, bears, and raccoons while hawks built nests in the high branches, and wild turkeys in the lower ones.

Related Reading: Acorn Tree Types: Identification Guide with Growing Zones (How to Grow)

Insects savored its bark, one rich in tannic and an excellent choice for curing hides.

The Cherokee Indians used crushed nuts to make the dough, treated ailing hearts with the leaves, and covered sores and wounds with an astringent tonic brewed from the sprouts.

Come autumn, when the chestnuts were piled in large bins, the European settler families sold them by the bushel. A railroad station in West Virginia was known to ship 150,000 pounds of chestnuts to many destinations along its route heading north route.

From west of the Mississippi River to Southern Maine and the Florida Panhandle, the America Chestnut was prominent throughout the landscape and numbered 25 percent of all the trees in the eastern hardwood forest.

Generations of people in Appalachia, the center of the tree’s native range, were rocked to sleep in chestnut cradles and put to rest in chestnut caskets.

American Chestnut Tree Characteristics (American Chestnut Identification)

Here are some of the characteristics of American Chestnut tree to help with American Chestnut identification.

American Chestnut Tree Leaves (American Chestnut Leaf)

The American Chestnut has an extended canoe-shaped leaf with a pronounced lance-shaped tip, with hooked and coarse teeth at the leaf’s edge. The leaf is faded green rather than waxy or shiny in texture.

The leaves are two inches wide and 4-to 7 inches long. The petiole, larger at its base, is stout and short.²

American Chestnut Wood

The lumber of the American Chestnut, a quickly-growing hardwood tree, is almost as sturdy as oak but lighter in weight. The heartwood is durable while the sapwood is sensitive to infestation which disqualifies the wood as an alternative to the oak.

The chestnut’s heartwood is gray and brown and becomes darker as it ages. The sapwood is narrow and almost white.

The wood’s texture is coarse while its rings are made apparent by rows of distinct, large pores at the start of the year’s growth. While the wood is reminiscent of oak, it doesn’t have the wood rays that characterize that tree.

Chestnut wood is relatively light and of decent strength when used as a post or a beam or post. Its shrinkage is moderate. The wood is fit to be dried in a kiln dried or air seasoned with little warping or honeycombing.

The Chestnut readily yields to tools and glues well, but requires careful nailing because it splits easily.

The Chestnut is similar in its resistance to decay to most durable wood like the cypress, cedars, and redwood.

The wood stores about nine percent tannin.

American Chestnut Tree Bark

The bark, though brown much like the buds and twigs and buds, is uneven and develops deep furrows and flat-topped ridges as it ages.

American Chestnut Tree Nuts (American Chestnut Seeds)

Pistillate flowers sprout in groups of two or three at the base. The fruit is a nut about one inch in diameter.

It’s almost flat on one side, and sprouts in 2-3 grouped clusters in a bur layered with sharp spines the twigs, somewhat stout or slender, are smooth, lustrous, and chestnut brown.

(And, if you grew up in the Appalachian region before the age of the internet and smart phones, you know that these spikey-tennis ball size fruits are the perfect ‘battle’ projectiles for inflicting pain on your siblings. That is, if you can stand to throw them!)

The pith is shaped like a star while the buds are a quarter of an inch long, brownish, and possess several visible scales. There are no terminal buds.

The bark is brown and fissured in flat, broad layers.

American Chestnut Tree Flowers

When identifying the American Chestnut flower, you can see the blooms during the mid-summer months. The male catskins look fluffy and the female flowers are small near the ends of the branches.

The flowers sprout on rows of spikelike aments that are bisexual or staminate. The staminate aments are four inches long while the flowers come in groups of 3-6 along the main axis.

When wondering, do trees have genders, with the American Chestnut, some trees have only male flowers. While other trees will have both males and females.

In order to pollinate, you need two trees, because rarely will the Chestnut tree pollinate itself.

Chestnut Tree Cultivation: American Chestnut Range

The American Chestnut lived happily for millennia in the forests of North America, when, at the onset of the 20th century, a fungus imported from China almost wiped out the entire chestnut population.

To this very day, the restoration of the chestnut is aimed at mostly growing trees that are blight-resistant.^3,5

Thanks to the collaborative effort of the United States Forest Service in conjunction with The American Chestnut Foundation, blight-resistant chestnut trees beginning to return to the scenery while scientists continue to develop strategies in hope of restoring the chestnut tree forests that once ruled the landscape.⁴

The American Chestnut has lost its ecological prowess as a considerable part of the American landscape. The nursery and silvicultural practices used to plant and grow blight-resistant American Chestnut seedlings are ongoing.

Only a limited number of hopefully blight-resistant trees are currently available. All American-born chestnut seedlings are prone to blight, however, before they’re infected, researchers can deduce how chestnut seedlings respond to various light conditions.

They’ve secured sunny, open, conditions on the forest floor and have managed low-light conditions by removing trees from the canopy layer.

The study took place on the forested slopes of an experimental forest in the Southern Appalachian Mountains while researchers monitored seedling growth and blight development for five years.⁸ About 66 percent of trees survived while both sites had equal amounts of blight infestation.

Researchers also observed the results of seedling size and concluded that the experimental forest could be more productive if only the largest seedlings were used for planting.

Controlling the growth of competing vegetation on the forest floor would have also helped the seedlings grow more efficiently.

Chinese Chestnut vs American Chestnut: What Is the Difference Between American Chestnut and Chinese Chestnut?

Many people wonder about the difference between the Chinese Chestnut vs American Chestnut tree.

Although very similar, once of the main differences is that the Chinese chestnut has some defense against the deadly fungus.

The leaf’s hairs, shape, and twig color are good ways to tell the American Chestnut from its Chinese counterpart.

(Image: JA2020¹⁵)

While the American Chestnut leaves are slender and long with a V-shaped base, the Chinese Chestnut has a wider and shiny leaf and is U-shaped at its base.

Moreover, at this point, the Chinese Chestnut is a tree that will reach maternity.

Are There Any American Chestnuts Left?

About 420 million American Chestnuts are still growing in the U.S.But, these are immature trees.

Even though they’re mostly an inch in diameter, they can be found as long as you’re familiar with their sapling characteristics.

Where Can I See a Full-Grown American Chestnut Tree (Castanea dentata)?

While the American Chestnuts were part of the American landscape for centuries, they’ve since gone almost extinct. Spotting a mature American Chestnut in the wild is very unusual.

But, last year, hunters discovered one in Delaware, which was a shocking and encouraging find.

Can You Eat American Chestnuts? Do American Chestnuts Taste Different?

Yes, the nuts from the beech tree are edible, and these include the American Chestnut. European and now almost impossible-to-find American Chestnuts are sweeter than the Chinese variety.

Still, most chestnut species taste almost the same when used in culinary applications.

What Is the American Chestnut Foundation?

The American Chestnut Foundation is dedicated to the restoration of the American Chestnut tree to its historic homeland in the eastern U.S. in hopes it will once again benefit the environment, society, and wildlife.

Unlike other environmental groups, its purpose isn’t to preserve the current tree population.

Their mission is more far-reaching—to restore the complete chestnut ecosystem and leave a better world for future generations. Forest restoration is unique in its demands and is different from traditional tree rejuvenation in that its main actions are dedicated to biodiversity and environmental protection.

Thus, restoring the American Chestnut is an extensive operation and complicated process. The unique work done by the foundation offers the option to assist many endangered species.

The restoration template planned for the American Chestnut can be duplicated worldwide in restoration efforts aimed at a variety of endangered plant and animal species.⁶

Is the American Chestnut Extinct? I Found an American Chestnut!

The American Chestnut, once a prominent and greatly valued and loved tree also known as the perfect tree, one that dominated forests from Maine to Georgia, has fallen to the ills of blight about 100 years ago when a plague, swift as a wildfire, swept through the chestnut forests.⁷

The outcome was the extinction of four billion trees, leaving the species on the edge of extinction.. It’s still one of the worst ecological catastrophes dealt to North America’s tree population and one that most experts consider irreversible.

Technically, it is considered functionally extinct.

However, if you find a full grown American Chestnut tree, be sure to contact your state’s forestry service. They will be very interested in the find because the tree may have developed a spontaneous defense, which could be shared.

Did Blight Destroy the American Chestnut?

The American Chestnut once ruled the eastern U.S. forests. Numbering in the billions, the tree was the tallest, largest, and fastest-growing.

Which often made it an outstanding feature in rural and urban landscapes.

Then everything changed with the introduction of Cryphonectria parasitica, a deadly Chinese blight, which reduced the American Chestnut to a tree that these days grow as a shrub.

No chestnut lumber has sold in America for decades. The 18-million-pound annual chestnut nut crop is grown in Europe or Asia.

Despite its tragic history, the American Chestnut is not yet extinct. The blight spared the roots because it couldn’t rid the soil of its microorganisms. Stump sprouts grow well in monitored locations blessed with lots of sunlight.

Sadly, even those well-intentioned efforts result in the tree succumbing to the blight. The tragic cycle of death and rebirth keeps the American Chestnut species alive even though it’s considered functionally extinct.

American Chestnut Culinary and Medical Use

Chestnuts used to be a vital economic resource in North America.⁹ They were sold in all cities and villages.

They still are during the Christmas season because their scent is easily recognized a mile away. Chestnuts are edible roasted or raw.

The European Sweet Chestnut is the main product sold these days.¹⁰ You have to peel the brown skin to reveal the white-yellow edible part.

Native Americans used many parts of the American Chestnut to cure infected skin, whooping cough, and heart ailments.^11,12 The nuts were a food source for many species of wildlife and were popular as a food source for farm livestock.

That was accomplished by letting the herds roam freely the forests once laden with American Chestnut trees.

Chestnuts are healthy, delicious, and easy to add to a modern diet. They have a firm yet soft texture and a mildly sweet flavor.

Chestnuts can be consumed raw but they’re high in tannins, which can lead to digestive problems and other complications in people who are sensitive to tannins.

How Do You Roast Chestnuts?

Chestnuts are a cinch to prepare.

Roast them in an oven on a baking sheet for about 30 minutes at 375°F. Piercing the nuts’ skin before roasting assures they won’t explode in the oven.

One can also boil the chestnuts in water. Bring the pot to a boil and then allow the nuts to simmer for about 25 minutes.

Once again, be sure to pierce the nuts’ skin before you boil them. Once cooked, remove the skin and relish it in a delicious snack.

Chestnuts are well incorporated into soups, salads, and desserts like pies and tarts.

There are many species of chestnuts and they share many of the same qualities. Common chestnut species include the American, Chinese Korean, Japanese, and European.

None of these chestnut species is related to the water chestnut—an aquatic vegetable popular in Asian cuisine.

Chestnuts are nutrient-rich and are known to alleviate health issues including better heart and digestive health and controlling blood sugar.

American Chestnut Folklore and Significance

Chestnut signals when we take the responsibility of providing for our family,  community, and ourselves. Chestnuts are part of the Fagaceae family of trees, which include the oak tree and beech tree—all generous contributors to society’s needs.

Chestnut trees have been contributing primary sustenance for millennia and have even served as a substitute for potatoes. They can also be ground into flour.

Alexander the Great and the Roman Army planted Sweet Chestnut trees throughout the European continent to provide a continuous and stable food source for the armies. Sweet Chestnuts can live for centuries and continue to contribute their grace and sustenance to new generations.

Japanese Chestnuts were cultivated before rice and as early as the 15 century BCE. Their sweet, edible nuts represent both hard times and success.

The blight-resistant Chinese and Japanese Chestnuts are now the prevalent species in America. They’re dried and roasted in their brown husks after they’re harvested from the cupule in which they sprouted.

When cooked, chestnuts have a sweet flavor and texture not far removed from one sweet potato. Don’t confuse chestnuts with buckeyes or Horse Chestnuts or buckeyes, which are part of the Sapindales family.

Buckeyes and Horse Chestnuts have a similar look but they are mildly toxic to humans people and animals.

Manufacturing Chestnut Wood

The chestnut lumber industry served a crucial part in rural economies.

Chestnut wood is lightweight, straight-grained, and rot-resistant, which makes it perfect for constructing fence posts, barn beams, railroad ties, and house construction.

(Image: Braetschit¹⁶)

It’s also a great wood for building excellent furniture and musical instruments.

Related Reading: Wood Hardness Scale Chart: Full List of 113 Domestic & Foreign Species

Furniture and Other Wood Products

The wood of the chestnut is durable yet easy to split when sawed and thus doesn’t have the stronger wood grain available in other hardwoods. The tree was exceptionally worthy for commercial use since it grew more quickly than oaks.

Because the wood is tannin-rich, it’s well resistant to decay. Tannins from the tree bark are also good for tanning leather.¹³

Even though bigger trees aren’t used for milling anymore, chestnut wood reclaimed from century-old barns has been refashioned into various furniture applications.

A ‘wormy’ chestnut points to an inferior wood grade that was damaged by insect infestation and was harvested from blight-riddled trees long-dead. This wormy type of wood has since become desirable for its rustic qualities.

The American Chestnut isn’t valued as a proper patio shade tree because its droppings are numerous and very messy. Catkins in springtime, spiny nut pods come autumn, and early winter leaves are a collective nuisance.¹⁴

Such drawbacks are part and parcel of all shade trees but the chestnut takes the cake on disorderly patio conduct especially when thousands of spiny seed pods choose to be scattered over a civilized backyard visited by people.

The American Chestnut, once a glorious and rampant species, was brought low by an invasive species.

The scientists working on restoring the tree to the Eastern Forests are close to a breakthrough, but many people wonder if it will be enough to save the American Chestnut tree from complete extinction and argue that invasive species must be prohibited with stronger regulation.