Media General News Service

WILKESBORO - The American chestnut tree, once one of the most important trees in the Appalachians before being nearly wiped out by blight, has new promise in 500 blight-resistant trees thriving a year after they were planted in national forests in North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.

"The plantings we are announcing are the first step to reintroducing this key species back to its native range," Roger Williams, the director of forest management for the U.S. Forest Service's Southern Region, said yesterday.

The hybrid trees have grown about a foot since they were planted by hand in 2008 and are now about 4 to 6 feet high. Of 1,200 American chestnut trees planted, 500 are blight resistant. Researchers will monitor differences in how the trees survive in the natural settings.

American chestnuts, whose nuts once covered the forest floors and whose tall, straight trunks yielded wood to build mountain cabins, once made up 25 percent of the hardwoods in the forests where they grew. They spread across some 200 million acres from Maine to Florida and west to the Ohio Valley.

The blight fungus, first reported in 1904 and believed to have come from Asia, destroyed an estimated 4 billion trees. By 1950, the species had all but disappeared.

The American chestnut still grows in the mountains, but the trees die young from the blight fungus. The hybrid blight-resistant trees have been nurtured and planted in a cooperative effort by the Forest Service, the American Chestnut Foundation, and the University of Tennessee.

The American Chestnut Foundation, based in Asheville, has been working with partners for more than 25 years to breed blight-resistant trees. They used a traditional backcross method that seeks to create a variety of tree that retains the tall height and other characteristics of the American chestnut while keeping the Chinese chestnut tree's resistance to blight. The Foundation furnished the trees.

The Forest Service has been conducting American chestnut research since 1995. The University of Tennessee's Tree Improvement Program provided nursery and field studies. In 2004, the groups signed an agreement to test blight-resistant trees on public lands.

"Today we have trees that are 94 percent American and 6 percent Chinese, with the goal that all we want from the Chinese is blight resistance," said Bryan Burhans, the president of the American Chestnut Foundation.

The exact location of the plantings will not be disclosed, to protect them from theft.

In 2010, the partners plan to plant an additional 1,200 seedlings on six acres in Tennessee and Virginia, including 500 blight-resistant trees.

There's a long way to go before blight-resistant American chestnut trees are planted on a large-scale basis across a wide area, said Barbara Crane, a regional geneticist with the Forest Service's Southern Region.

The hybrid trees have a 15 to 16 ratio of American chestnut genes to Chinese genes. Researchers want to see if the trees will grow tall like the American chestnut, which reached heights or 100 feet or more. The Chinese chestnut is a low, spreading tree.

Stacy Clark, a research forester for the Forest Services Southern Research Station in Asheville, said they planted high-quality seedlings that were large enough to get above deer browsing and big enough to compete with natural vegetation.

American chestnuts often grew 50 feet tall before branches sprouted out, offering a straight-grained lumber that was lighter than oak but resistant to rot. A mature tree was a major food source for animals and people, dropping some 6,000 nuts during a season.

The nuts were also a source of income for mountain folks.

"You know the song, 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,' those chestnuts were gathered in the forests and sold and marketed in the cities," said Scott Schlarbaum, a professor of forest genetics and director of the Tree Improvement Program at the University of Tennessee.

These new blight-resistant trees are what the partners call "legacy trees."

"These trees represent the future for the foundation of the American chestnut," Burhans said.

mmitchell@wsjournal.com.

336-667-5691.

For more information about the project and the American chestnut, visit www.fs.fed.us/r8/chestnut and www.

.acf.org.

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