Chestnut Tree Poised For A Comeback

The American chestnut tree, once a significant species in eastern U.S. forests but nearly wiped out by a fungal blight beginning a hundred years ago, may be poised for a comeback with the help of a Purdue University forestry professor.

By creating a hybrid variety that incorporates blight-resistant traits from the Chinese chestnut, Douglass Jacobs hopes that we may see the American chestnut tree eventually reclaim the prominence it had long held in eastern forests that ran from the southeast states northward into New England.

Douglass Jacobs examines a young hybrid of the American chestnut. He expects the trees could be reintroduced in the next decade. Credit: Purdue University file photo/Nicole Jacobs

This is great environmental news on two levels.

First, an ecosystem with a richer balance of original, native species is more viable and productive. While we can't really go back to recreate forest conditions as they existed before we arrived, we may be able to repopulate a formerly important member of the community that's all but disappeared. 

And second, not only do hardwood trees such as the chestnut take on and sequester within their biomass more carbon dioxide than their softwood counterparts, the chestnut is an especially fast-growing variety in comparison to most other hardwoods.

Jacobs says that trees remove from the atmosphere about one-sixth of human-caused carbon emissions. A viable repopulation of the chestnut tree could help remove more carbon dioxide, and do so more quickly. 

It's a true win-win: bringing back a once-significant and nearly-lost tree species, and one that may lend a hand -- or a branch -- in the fight against climate change.