MUENCHHAUSEN
AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,
RENEWABLE RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,
AND RELATED TOPICS
By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.
BETHESDA, MD
JJGREENBARON@VERIZON.NET
FOR COMMENTS: GREEN_BARON99.MUENCHHAUSEN@BLOGGER.COM
===============================================================
NOVEMBER 27, 2007
===============================================================
WELCOME!
The Green Baron welcomes one and all who take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to “tell it like it is” as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions. There are enough of those to go around in other publications.
The Green Baron also welcomes comments from anyone who may read Muenchhausen. Please send comments to the e-mail address above or to Green_Baron99.muenchhausen@blogger.com.
“The Spreading Chestnut Tree” in front of the smithy, Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA, before 1876.
Until the early 20th century, the eastern United States was thickly covered with whole forests of American chestnut trees (Castanea dentata). During the mid-autumn, chestnuts would literally rain down onto the ground. For a bountiful chestnut harvest, one had but to bring a large sack and scoop the nuts from the ground. American chestnut trees could attain heights as great as 40 meters (more than 130 feet). They sometimes were characterized as “America’s Redwoods of the East”. For example, one chestnut in North Carolina has a trunk diameter of 17 ½ feet or 5 1/3 meters.
THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT FOUNDATION is located at 469 Main Street, Suite 1, P.O. Box 4044, Bennington, Vermont 05201; 802-447-0110; fax 802-442-6855; e-mail chestnut@acf.org.
WHAT IS BOOTSTRAP PRESS?
Bootstrap Press is a nonprofit organization founded in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., to promote the development and management of technology and businesses based on renewable resources. We also encourage the preservation of our Earth's natural habitats and its plant and animal species. So do a lot of other organizations, and more power to them for doing so!
Bootstrap Press is different because its members believe that the development of renewable resources and the preservation of habitats and species are receiving far more lip service than the financial and technical support needed to achieve these goals. We also think they will continue to be subjects of more talk than action until someone can show how renewable resources and the diversity of biological species can be the basis for potentially profitable businesses as well as a matter of ethics. Bootstrap Press intends to provide a forum for the discussion of how to build up such business, and of related topics.
There's one more thing we should mention about Muenchhausen and Bootstrap Press. We try to present only the scientific and technical facts that are correct to the best of our knowledge, belief, and good faith. It is up to Muenchhausen's readers to draw their own conclusions and make their own judgments.
NOTE: The mention of a product or service in Muenchhausen is in no way to be regarded as an endorsement of that product or service by Muenchhausen, Bootstrap Press, the Green Baron, or any other contributor to Muenchhausen. Also, the views expressed in Muenchhausen are The Green Baron’s own, and are based on the best of his knowledge, belief, and good faith.
AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,
RENEWABLE RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,
AND RELATED TOPICS
By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.
BETHESDA, MD
JJGREENBARON@VERIZON.NET
FOR COMMENTS: GREEN_BARON99.MUENCHHAUSEN@BLOGGER.COM
===============================================================
NOVEMBER 27, 2007
===============================================================
WELCOME!
The Green Baron welcomes one and all who take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to “tell it like it is” as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions. There are enough of those to go around in other publications.
The Green Baron also welcomes comments from anyone who may read Muenchhausen. Please send comments to the e-mail address above or to Green_Baron99.muenchhausen@blogger.com.
“UNDER THE SPREADING CHESTNUT TREE”
“Under the spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.”
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“The Spreading Chestnut Tree” in front of the smithy, Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA, before 1876.
Until the early 20th century, the eastern United States was thickly covered with whole forests of American chestnut trees (Castanea dentata). During the mid-autumn, chestnuts would literally rain down onto the ground. For a bountiful chestnut harvest, one had but to bring a large sack and scoop the nuts from the ground. American chestnut trees could attain heights as great as 40 meters (more than 130 feet). They sometimes were characterized as “America’s Redwoods of the East”. For example, one chestnut in North Carolina has a trunk diameter of 17 ½ feet or 5 1/3 meters.
The rapid near-disappearance of the American chestnut is a graphic demonstration of the ecological havoc invasive species can wreak, be they mammals and seed-bearing plants, or organisms as humble as fungi. In the case of the American chestnut, the invasive fungus was Cryphonectria parasitica, believed to have hitched a ride to the United States from Asia, on a shipment of Chinese chestnut nursery stock to California. It is not known exactly what year the shipment was received, but by 1904, it was evident that something was affecting the American chestnut adversely. By about 1911, much of the C. dentata population was gone; by 1950, about 3.5 billion trees, or about 90% of the population, had died. The disease, actually a canker disease, was named the chestnut blight because it killed the trees so fast. Incidentally, it is currently estimated that invasive species cost the US economy about $150 billion a year (no, this is not a misprint).
Cankers of chestnut blight.
For many a year, The Green Baron (TGB) has been combing the literature and various other reports to see how much, if any progress was being made in combating the chestnut blight. For several decades, there have been scientists and volunteers working to try to restore this majestic tree to the forests it once populated so profusely. They noticed that from the stumps of dead C. dentata, new shoots would grow, soon, however, to be killed by the blight. It is a near-miracle that anything remains of the American chestnut, but there seems to be enough to provide genetic material for research aimed at the tree’s hopefully eventual restoration.
During the 1980s, the American Chestnut Foundation began a vigorous campaign to develop a chestnut tree that could ward off the fungus. It happens that the Chinese chestnut, which grows on a tree much shorter than the C. dentata, is resistant to the C. parasitica fungus. Cross-breeding of the American and Chinese chestnut trees has yielded a tree that is a 50/50 mix of chestnut tree genes.
The next step has been to cross-breed the 50/50 trees with surviving American chestnuts, such as may be left, a process known as “backcrossing”. Marshal Case, president of the American Chestnut Foundation, says that the backcrossing project has produced trees that contain about 94% C. dentata genes, and the remainder, Chinese chestnut tree genes. These trees continue to be bred to yield American-type chestnut trees with the highest resistance to the canker/blight fungus.
The final product likely will not contain 100% American chestnut tree genes, but TGB suggests that we consider 100% American gene content to be analogous to a mathematical asymptote (a hyperbola, for instance, approaches a line known as an asymptote, without ever reaching it mathematically, until, perhaps, the lines are extended to the limit of the universe). This final product may still be years away. Nevertheless, the Foundation, together with the US Forest Service hopes, perhaps within two to three years, to begin experimentally planting such trees, whose genetic content would be mostly American, at six sites from Tennessee to West Virginia.
TGB plans to keep close tabs on the progress of C. dentata restoration. He does appreciate a roast turkey with chestnut dressing (dindon aux marrons), and hopes still to be around if and when American-type chestnuts again become available. They also must have been the basis for a great cream of chestnut (crème de marrons) dessert, and TGB hopes to sample some of that before he is gathered unto his fathers.
For many a year, The Green Baron (TGB) has been combing the literature and various other reports to see how much, if any progress was being made in combating the chestnut blight. For several decades, there have been scientists and volunteers working to try to restore this majestic tree to the forests it once populated so profusely. They noticed that from the stumps of dead C. dentata, new shoots would grow, soon, however, to be killed by the blight. It is a near-miracle that anything remains of the American chestnut, but there seems to be enough to provide genetic material for research aimed at the tree’s hopefully eventual restoration.
During the 1980s, the American Chestnut Foundation began a vigorous campaign to develop a chestnut tree that could ward off the fungus. It happens that the Chinese chestnut, which grows on a tree much shorter than the C. dentata, is resistant to the C. parasitica fungus. Cross-breeding of the American and Chinese chestnut trees has yielded a tree that is a 50/50 mix of chestnut tree genes.
The next step has been to cross-breed the 50/50 trees with surviving American chestnuts, such as may be left, a process known as “backcrossing”. Marshal Case, president of the American Chestnut Foundation, says that the backcrossing project has produced trees that contain about 94% C. dentata genes, and the remainder, Chinese chestnut tree genes. These trees continue to be bred to yield American-type chestnut trees with the highest resistance to the canker/blight fungus.
The final product likely will not contain 100% American chestnut tree genes, but TGB suggests that we consider 100% American gene content to be analogous to a mathematical asymptote (a hyperbola, for instance, approaches a line known as an asymptote, without ever reaching it mathematically, until, perhaps, the lines are extended to the limit of the universe). This final product may still be years away. Nevertheless, the Foundation, together with the US Forest Service hopes, perhaps within two to three years, to begin experimentally planting such trees, whose genetic content would be mostly American, at six sites from Tennessee to West Virginia.
TGB plans to keep close tabs on the progress of C. dentata restoration. He does appreciate a roast turkey with chestnut dressing (dindon aux marrons), and hopes still to be around if and when American-type chestnuts again become available. They also must have been the basis for a great cream of chestnut (crème de marrons) dessert, and TGB hopes to sample some of that before he is gathered unto his fathers.
THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT FOUNDATION is located at 469 Main Street, Suite 1, P.O. Box 4044, Bennington, Vermont 05201; 802-447-0110; fax 802-442-6855; e-mail chestnut@acf.org.
WHAT IS BOOTSTRAP PRESS?
Bootstrap Press is a nonprofit organization founded in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A., to promote the development and management of technology and businesses based on renewable resources. We also encourage the preservation of our Earth's natural habitats and its plant and animal species. So do a lot of other organizations, and more power to them for doing so!
Bootstrap Press is different because its members believe that the development of renewable resources and the preservation of habitats and species are receiving far more lip service than the financial and technical support needed to achieve these goals. We also think they will continue to be subjects of more talk than action until someone can show how renewable resources and the diversity of biological species can be the basis for potentially profitable businesses as well as a matter of ethics. Bootstrap Press intends to provide a forum for the discussion of how to build up such business, and of related topics.
There's one more thing we should mention about Muenchhausen and Bootstrap Press. We try to present only the scientific and technical facts that are correct to the best of our knowledge, belief, and good faith. It is up to Muenchhausen's readers to draw their own conclusions and make their own judgments.
NOTE: The mention of a product or service in Muenchhausen is in no way to be regarded as an endorsement of that product or service by Muenchhausen, Bootstrap Press, the Green Baron, or any other contributor to Muenchhausen. Also, the views expressed in Muenchhausen are The Green Baron’s own, and are based on the best of his knowledge, belief, and good faith.
Labels: American chestnut, Chestnut, chestnut blight, chestnut restoration
posted by Green_Baron00 @ 5:48 PM
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