News about American Chestnut Tree Seedlings Installed Eleven Years Ago

By Kasha Helget

In late 2013, volunteers installed dozens of American chestnut tree saplings (Castanea dentata) in Arlington and Alexandria parks and public sites. These young trees were propagated by the Earth Sangha nursery from seeds collected mainly in the northern Blue Ridge area (https://armn.org/2014/02/05/seeds-of-hope-american-chestnut-replanting/). The hope was that the offspring of trees that had so far survived the chestnut blight fungus could be reestablished locally.

So, how did they do?

Arlington saplings

A couple years after the trees were installed in Arlington parks, just a few were still alive—one each in Benjamin Banneker Park (the healthiest!), Gulf Branch Park (doing well enough), and Bluemont Park and Glencarlyn Parks (still alive but not doing very well) (https://armn.org/2015/11/12/chestnut-planting-update/).

Early in June, I met with Vincent Verweij, Arlington County Urban Forest Manager, and Alonso Abugattas, Arlington Parks Natural Resources Manager, to check the status of the chestnuts in three of the locations where they were still alive in 2015. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any trees in Glencarlyn Park or Bluemont, and also learned that the Gulf Branch survivor had succumbed, too.

When we arrived at the park, we saw that the chestnut tree had grown to about 15 feet. Sadly, it was dead. While it had fruited recently, nobody (except for squirrels and other critters) collected seeds. It had also produced sprouts at its base, which is common with chestnuts trees that don’t make it. These resprouts may survive for a while, but invariably, they never seem to make it to a full-sized tree.

Verweij cut the tree down and saved samples to determine whether it died from chestnut blight. (Tests confirmed that the blight killed it.) He added that twigs like one from the Banneker tree may have shown signs earlier that it was being affected by the blight. But death of an otherwise healthy tree is most obviously from blight. Arlington staff did not inspect the Banneker tree for the fungus given that the tree had such vigor for so many years. Verweij saved the Banneker tree’s sprouts to see how they will react over time.

Alexandria saplings

In early July, I accompanied Rod Simmons, retired Alexandria Natural Resources Manager, to Dora Kelley Nature Park, where he had overseen the installation of twenty chestnut saplings in two areas at the park: seven along the woodland edge and main trail to the park at the end of Sanger Avenue and thirteen in stump cavities and light gaps at the summit of a hill. As with the Arlington plantings, the saplings did well in the first few years, but then began to disappear. Sadly, we were unable to find any that survived. Deer predation may also have caused their demise, according to Simmons.

Other chestnut trees have been reported in the area but it is not certain where they came from or even whether they are true American chestnut trees or were crossed with Asian varieties. Here are some reports on the iNaturalist site.

While the 2013 planting efforts did not yield a happy ending here, not all hope is lost. There has been some discussion about repeating this experiment in the near future, given that the prior installations were successful—at least for a while. Among lessons learned for future plantings are to use geolocation tools to find the plantings easily; visit them at regular intervals to track how well they’re doing over time; and take better care of the trees, especially when they’re young (e.g., watering them and using deer exclosure cages to protect them from predation).

In addition, other organizations in elsewhere in the country continue to research and experiment with strategies to bring back the American chestnut. So, we remain optimistic these once-mighty trees may one day return to their native range.