American chestnut: The life, death, and rebirth of a perfect tree

American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree

Volumn , Issue , 2007, Pages

  Freinkel, Susan ^a  

^a NONE

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References (269)

1. "Chestnut deWned the region": Charlotte Ross quoted in Peter Friederici, Nature's Restoration: People and Places on the Front Lines of Conservation (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2006), 55-56.
2. "the country is . . . on the verge": Theodore Roosevelt, "Seventh Annual Message to Congress, 1907," State of the Union Addresses (WhiteWsh, MN: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 236-93.
3. America was known as the "wooden country": James Hall, Statistics of the West (Cincinnati: H.W. Derby, 1848), 100- 101, in Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 5.
4. Patrick County's southern border: Patrick County Historical Society, History of Patrick County, Virginia (Stuart, VA: 1999), 1.
5. "Up here there was a world of chestnuts": Transcript of interview with W. Noel Weaver, Feb. 20, 1981, Patrick County Project, Special Collection, Newman Library, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA.
6. Chestnuts . . . grew all over Laurasia: Steven Nash, "A Man and His Tree," Washington Post Magazine, July 25, 2004.
7. Allegheny chinquapin: There is another type of chinquapin in North America, the Ozark chinquapin, but taxonomists disagree over whether it is a separate species or a subspecies of the Allegheny chinquapin.
8. Xavorful nuggets of nutrition: Melinda Hemmelgarn, "NUTrition and Your Health: Missouri Chestnuts," and Sandra Anagnostakis and Peter Devin, "Nutrients in Chestnuts," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 18 (Spring 2004): 35-41.
9. induced peasants "to laziness": Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, "Chestnuts," in The Cambridge World History of Food, ed. Kriemheld Conee Ornelas and Kenneth F. Kiple (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Accessed online at http://www.cup.org/books/kiple/chestnuts.htm. The chapter is a rich source of information about the role of the chestnut in Europe.
10. one of the pillars of civilization: According to Fauve-Chamoux, "Chestnuts," the Romans and Greeks also believed that chestnuts provided protection against dysentery, poisons, and the bite of a mad dog.
11. J. Russell Smith asked one villager: J. Russell Smith, Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1953), 131.
12. places with chestnut in their names: SongLin Fei, "The Geography of American Tree Species and Associated Place Names," Journal of Forestry 16 (March 2007): 84-90. Fei used the U.S. Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information System database to perform his analysis. Clint Neel, a member of the Tennessee chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, came up with 1,035 "chestnut" place names by searching the Web site http://www.topozone.com.
13. When colonial Americans began planting chestnut orchards: Sandra Anagnostakis, "An Historical Reference for Chestnut Introductions into North America," The Annual Report of the Northern Nut Growers Association 80 (1989): 132-43.
14. source of the expression "a chestnut": Don C. Seitz, "The Chestnut Tree's Struggle to Survive," The Outlook, Aug. 11, 1926, 511.
15. a single tree might bear as many as six thousand nuts: Pennsylvania chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, "The American Chestnut Tree in the Eastern U.S," http://www.patacf.org/history.htm.
16. huge drives of wild turkeys: Donald Edward Davis, Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000), 26.
17. a rich source of remedies: Paul Hamel and Mary U. Chiltoskey, Cherokee Plants and Their Uses- A 400 Year History (Sylva, NC: Herald Publishing, 1975), in Ann Frazier Rogers, "Chestnut and Native Americans," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 16 (Fall 2002): 24.
18. "Hodadenon and the Chestnut Tree": Annie Y. Bhagwandin, The Chestnut Cookbook: Recipes, Folklore and Practical Information (Tucson, AZ: Hats OV Books, 1996), 12-13.
19. "If ever there was a place deWned by a tree": The quote is from a talk Ross delivered at the annual meeting of the American Chestnut Foundation, Oct. 29-31, 2004.
20. One Goliath in Francis Cove, North Carolina: Samuel P. Detwiler, "The American Chestnut Tree," American Forestry
21. (Oct. 1915): 957. An article in an 1876 edition of The Kentucky Argus tells of a nine-foot diameter, 230-year-old chestnut that was split into seven hundred rails. Cited in Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation
22. (Spring 2003): 15.
23. "a sea with white combers": Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1991), 189. 18 population pressures . . . forced many residents: Davis, Where There Are Mountains, 93-108. Davis provides a good description of how Europeans settled the region and created their farms.
24. "the bare bones" of the mountains: Richard C. Davids, The Man Who Moved a Mountain (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 2.
25. to make a rail fence: Ralph H. Lutts, "Like Manna from God: The American Chestnut Trade in Southwestern Virginia," Environmental History 9 (July 2004): 500.
26. "white oak acorn": J. Russell Smith, in The Pennsylvania Chestnut Blight Conference Proceedings, ed. The Pennsylvania Chestnut Tree Blight Commission (Harrisburg, PA: C. E. Aughinbaugh, 1912), 145.
27. "There was one time of year when we had food": Davids, The Man Who Moved a Mountain, 17.
28. Chestnut leaves . . . could be brewed into a broth: Indeed, between 1873 and 1905, chestnut leaves were known to pharmacologists as extractum Castanea Xuidum and were considered so valuable they were included in the U.S. Pharmacopeia. Alice Thomas Vitale, "Leaves in Myth, Magic and Medicine," excerpted on the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation Web site, http://ipm.ppws.vt.edu/griYn/lore.html.
29. No one needed to buy land: David Cameron, "The Drovers of Appalachia," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 15 (Spring 2002): 10. Because the forests were used for open grazing and foraging, chestnut fences that zigzagged across the mountains were intended not to pen livestock in but to keep opengrazing herds out of Welds and vegetable gardens.
30. "There wasn't no kind of game": Jake Waldroop, "Memories of the American Chestnut," in FoxWre 6, ed. Eliot Wigginton (New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1980), 402. 20 "The chestnut mast is knee-deep": The quotes are from immigrants' letters Ross described at the annual meeting of the American Chestnut Foundation, Oct. 2004.
31. They'd tend the trees: Lutts, "Like Manna from God," 511-12.
32. "a better provider than any man": Quoted in Davids, The Man Who Moved a Mountain, 5.
33. "had little or no cash value": Lutts, "Like Manna from God," 502.
34. lumber barons were now casting their eyes: For information on the Appalachian lumber boom, see Davis, Where There Are Mountains; Chris Bolgiano, The Appalachian Forest: A Search for Roots and Renewal (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998); Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
35. it was the arrival of a railroad line in 1884: For a discussion of the Dick and Willie and its impact on the chestnut trade, see Lutts, "Like Manna from God," 506; also Patrick County Historical Society, History, 278-79.
36. nut collection had become a major industry: Lutts, "Like Manna from God," 502. The extent of the trade varied, depending on how widespread chestnuts were in a given area, how good the local transportation systems were, and how much people needed that extra income.
37. The nuts didn't bring a lot of cash: Robert L. Youngs, "'A Right Smart Little Jolt': Loss of the Chestnut and a Way of Life," Journal of Forestry 98 (Feb. 2000): 19. Youngs claims retailers were making twelve dollars a bushel, the equivalent of about twenty-four cents a pound.
38. It was the same story all over the mountain: Recollections come from Patrick County Oral Histories, held in Patrick County Library; Youngs, "'A Right Smart Little Jolt,'"; and Noel Moore, "Memories of the American Chestnut," in Wigginton, FoxWre 6, 403-4.
39. At the height of the season: Lutts, "Like Manna from God," 504, 506.
40. "the forest was only dented": Bolgiano, Appalachian Forest, 76.
41. typically held fewer than two hundred acres: Davis, Where There Are Mountains, 179.
42. Such a winning combination of traits: P. L. Buttrick, "Commercial Uses of Chestnut," American Forestry 21 (Oct. 1915): 961. The article describes many of the contemporary uses of chestnut that are listed.
43. over two-thirds of tannic acid produced: Buttrick, "Commercial Uses," 964.
44. Champion Paper and Fibre Company: Andrew Owen, "Waste Nothing-Sell the Same Wood Twice," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 19 (Spring 2005): 13-16.
45. chestnut pulp was being used for all sorts of low-grade paper: Buttrick, "Commercial Uses," 964.
46. most of the proWts: Youngs, "'A Right Smart Little Jolt,'" 20.
47. peaking in 1909: Bolgiano, Appalachian Forest, 80.
48. "hungerless sleep" of a spore: The phrase is Alan Burdick's from Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 198.
49. "in its natural condition": Annual Report of the New York Zoological Society 9 (1905): 43.
50. The collection included chimpanzees: Annual Report of the New York Zoological Society (1905) and Brief History of the Bronx Zoo-the zoo was renamed in 1993-from the Bronx Zoo Web site, http://bronxzoo.com/bz-about_the_zoo/bzhistory.
51. the park drew residents of Manhattan's crowded Lower East Side tenements: Ogden Tanner and Adele Auchincloss, The New York Botanical Garden: An Illustrated Chronicle of Plants and People (New York: Walker and Co., 1991), 57.
52. Merkel set about trying to treat his sickened trees: Merkel described his discovery and eVorts in "A Deadly Fungus on the American Chestnut," Annual Report of the New York Zoological Society 10 (1906): 97-103.
53. would return at night to make sure all was well: William Alphonso Murrill, Autobiography (Gainesville, FL: N.p., 1945)
54. this book oVers a rich portrait of Murrill. Information on Murrill also comes from two articles published in Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooming-David W. Rose, "William Alphonso Murrill: The Legend of the Naturalist" (Dec. 2, 2002)
55. James W. Kimbrough, "The Twilight Years of William Alphonso Murrill" (Summer 2003)-from a lengthy obituary by George F. Weber in Mycologia 53 (Nov.-Dec. 1961): 543-57; and from author interview with James Kimbrough, June 2005.
56. "The sights and sounds of the Welds": Murrill, Autobiography, 7.
57. he collected a staggering seventy-Wve-thousand-plus botanical specimens: Kimbrough, "The Twilight Years."
58. "With a splendid heritage of health": Murrill, Autobiography, 37.
59. a son . . . died in infancy: Kimbrough, "The Twilight Years."
60. "I am wedded to science": Murrill, Autobiography, 45.
61. "To be strong and independent, a man doesn't have to drive his lawn-roller": Murrill, Autobiography, 47.
62. "a charming Southern gentleman": Rose, "William Alphonso Murrill."
63. Murrill set to work in his lab: Murrill described his research in several articles, including "A Serious Chestnut Disease," Journal of the New York Botanical Garden 80 (June 1906): 143-53; "Further Remarks on a Serious Chestnut Disease," Journal of the New York Botanical Garden 81 (Sept. 1906): 203-11.
64. "Mycelium inserted beneath the bark": Murrill, "A Serious Chestnut Disease," 146.
65. "There is no mistaking the blight": "Mysterious Blight Kills Chestnut Trees by Thousands," New York Times, Oct. 2, 1910, part 5, 2.
66. He presumed infection took place through wounds: Murrill, "A Serious Chestnut Disease," 152.
67. a parasite with far more destructive habits: Murrill, "A New Chestnut Disease," Torreya: A Monthly Journal of Botanical Notes and News 6 (July 1906): 187.
68. It would be reassigned yet one more time in 1978: William Lord, "Cryphonectria parasitica, Stealth Invader," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 11 (Summer 1997): 32-37.
69. native to the East Coast: Murrill, quoted in "Mysterious Blight," 2.
70. "vigilance and care should largely control the disease": Murrill, "A Serious Chestnut Disease," 153.
71. he was shocked by how rapidly the plague had spread: Murrill, "Further Remarks," 203, 207.
72. "Chestnut Trees Face Destruction": New York Times, May 21, 1908, 4.
73. "The chestnut trees are our special friends": "The Chestnut Trees Going," American Forestry 18 (July 1912): 457.
74. "all New York goes a-nutting": Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits, ed. Bradley Dean (New York: Norton and Co., 2000), 213.
75. People Xocked to chestnut groves: "A Good Place for Nutting Parties," New York Times, Oct. 13, 1901, SM15.
76. the New York lawyer who died: "G. S. Bonner's Injuries Fatal," New York Times, Oct. 4, 1902, 9.
77. "I love to gather them": Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 210.
78. All told, he estimated, Wve to ten million dollars' worth: "Chestnut Trees Face Destruction," New York Times, May 21, 1908, V9.
79. European chestnuts . . . were also susceptible: "The Costly Blight of the Chestnut Canker," New York Times, May 31, 1908, V9.
80. "There should be a law": "Chestnut Trees Face Destruction," V9.
81. The city's rich and famous beseeched him for help: "Mysterious Blight," 2.
82. It was said a tree could be saved: "All Chestnut Trees Here Are Doomed," New York Times, July 30, 1911, 6.
83. the disease highlighted the dangers of permitting people to hunt native birds: "Chestnut Trees of State Dying of Cancer," The New York World, n.d.
84. A Philadelphia Xorist insisted that it was caused by a small black beetle: "What Kills the Chestnuts," New York Times, August 5, 1911, 3.
85. As Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson declared: Annual Reports of the Department of Agriculture, 1900 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1900), quoted in Paul D. Peterson and Clay S. GriYth, "Herman von Schrenk: The Beginnings of Forest Pathology in the U.S," Forest History Today (Fall 1999): 30.
86. an "appallingly vast army": "Parasites Threaten White Pine Trees and Potatoes," New York Times, April 21, 1912, SM11.
87. "It is no exaggeration": Haven Metcalf, "The Immunity of the Japanese Chestnut to the Bark Disease," Bureau of Plant Industry Bulletin 121 (Feb. 10, 1908): VI: 6, reprinted in James Wilson, Chestnut Tree Blight: Letter from the Secretary of Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing OYce, 1912), 6.
88. Bessey had been among the Wrst botanists: Campbell et al., Formative Years, 100-101.
89. "it's a waste of money": "Costly Blight," V9.
90. the trees one knows "will never be forgotten": Murrill, Autobiography, 100.
91. "If this disease continues": Murrill, "The Chestnut Canker," Torreya: A Monthly Journal of Botanical Notes and News 8 (1908): 111-12.
92. "Certain trees . . . are too sensitive": "Urge States to Act to Save Shade Trees," New York Times, Aug. 29, 1909, 8.
93. "There is no contagious disease known that does not yield": Wilson, Chestnut Tree Blight, 4.
94. a resource worth at least three to four hundred million dollars: "In Aid of Chestnut Trees," New York Times, Nov. 12, 1911, 11. Current value based on the Consumer Price Index.
95. "The stake for which we are Wghting": "All Chestnut Trees in America Threatened," The Sun, Jan. 14, 1912.
96. "It seems unthinkable that a disease of this character": Programme of the Conference Called by the Governor of Pennsylvania to Consider Ways and Means for Preventing the Spread of the Chestnut Tree Bark Disease (Harrisburg, PA: C. E. Aughinbaugh, 1912), 16; hereafter referred to as Conference Proceedings.
97. inaugurated in a burst of patriotic fanfare: George Hepting, "Death of the American Chestnut," Journal of Forest History 18 (July 1974): 634.
98. the scouts soon discovered it had already hopped that watery barrier: Report of the Pennsylvania Chestnut Tree Blight Commission, July 1 to December 31, 1912 (Harrisburg, PA: C.E. Aughinbaugh, 1912), 20.
99. Murrill . . . considered it pure folly: "States Are to Act on Chestnut Blight," New York Times, Feb. 18, 1912, 6.
100. In one of his Wrst bulletins on the chestnut bark disease: William A. Murrill, "The Spread of the Chestnut Disease," Journal of the New York Botanical Garden 9 (Feb. 1908): 30.
101. only two chestnuts remained of the park's original 1,500: "Only Two Chestnuts Left," The Evening Post, Jan. 8, 1912.
102. "It has swept like a tidal wave": "States Are to Act," 6.
103. Metcalf concluded he had succeeded: Haven Metcalf and J. F. Collins, The Control of the Chestnut Bark Disease, USDA Farmer's Bulletin 467 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1911), 11.
104. Metcalf saw it more as a smoldering wildWre: Haven Metcalf, quoted in "What Shall We Do about the Chestnut Blight?" Country Life in America (Sept. 1, 1911): 93.
105. "We have discovered that if these advance spots of infection can be located": "All Chestnut Trees in America Threatened," The Sun, Jan. 14, 1912.
106. the federal government had no authority: Metcalf and Collins, Chestnut Bark Disease, 11.
107. In December 1911: "States Are to Act," 6.
108. By early 1912, bills to that eVect were pending: "All Chestnut Trees." The federal bill passed in August, according to "To Check Chestnut Blight," New York Times, Aug. 9, 1912, 7.
109. growing tension between . . . the "progressives" . . . and the "reactionaries": "After Insurgents in War on Blight," The [Philadelphia] Evening Bulletin, Feb. 12, 1912.
110. To do nothing "is un-American": Conference Proceedings, 20.
111. Williams proclaimed that he would "go after" any visitor: "After Insurgents."
112. the gentlemanly Virginian Wnally rose to speak: Conference Proceedings, 194-95.
113. There was only one recorded dissenter: "Checking Tree Blight," New York Times, Feb. 22, 1912, 7.
114. it had been "the battle of his career": Murrill, Autobiography, 70.
115. his career soon took a tragic turn: The story of Murrill's post-New York years is told in Kimbrough, "The Twilight Years," and Rose, "William Alphonso Murrill." Also author interview with James Kimbrough, June 2005.
116. Carleton, the USDA expert on foreign-plant introductions: Campbell et al., Formative Years, 275.
117. "one of the big men of the department": Haven Metcalf, letter to Harold Peirce dated May 13, 1912, from the Pennsylvania State Archives.
118. Carleton had already changed the agricultural habits of America's breadbasket: The story of Carleton's eVort to introduce Russian wheat to the United States is taken from an excellent biographical sketch of Carleton by Paul de Kruif in Hunger Fighters (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1928), 3-30.
119. what attracted him . . . was "the prospect of a good scrap": Metcalf letter to Peirce, May 13, 1912.
120. The sheer magnitude of the task was daunting: Report of the Pennsylvania Blight Commission 1912, 29.
121. the law . . . granted Carleton and his men "the power": Conference Proceedings, 131. The commission's activities were extensively documented in a series of reports issued from 1912 to 1914.
122. The ever-skeptical Murrill questioned the value of the cure: William A. Murrill, Mycologia 5 (Jan. 1913): 90.
123. There were more than thirty commercial uses of chestnut: Conference Proceedings, 136.
124. As Charles Darwin observed: Quoted in Burdick, Out of Eden, 7.
125. farmers . . . have sought out exotic additions . . . "with ludicrously little knowledge": Yvonne Baskin, A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines: The Growing Threat of Species Invasions (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002), 21.
126. "Ballast lots sprouted": Burdick, Out of Eden, 200.
127. American authorities relied instead "on a loosely organized . . . practice of inspection": Campbell et al., Formative Years, 277.
128. Meyer was a Dutch-born, mostly self-taught botanist: Isabel Shipley Cunningham, Frank N. Meyer: Plant Hunter in Asia (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1984). The book quotes extensively from Meyer's journals.
129. During one earlier trip to China, he had come across groves of chestnut: David Fairchild, "The Discovery of the Chestnut Bark Disease in China," Science 38 (Aug. 29, 1913): 297.
130. When Metcalf received the Chinese specimen: David Fairchild, The World Was My Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938), 405-6. Fairchild also tells the story of the discovery of the fungus's origin in "Discovery," 297-99.
131. one last link would be added: C. L. Shear and Neal E. Stevens, "The Discovery of the Chestnut-Blight Parasite (Endothia parasitica) and Other Chestnut Fungi in Japan," Science 48 (Feb. 4, 1916): 173-76.
132. political machinations . . . brought the . . . Commission's grandiose eVort to a close: Minutes of the Pennsylvania Chestnut Tree Blight Commission, June 27, 1913, Pennsylvania State Archives.
133. Carleton tried to put the best gloss he could: Mark Carleton, "The Fight to Save the Chestnut Trees; Final Report of the General Manager," in Final Report of the Pennsylvania Chestnut Tree Blight Commission, Jan. 1 to Dec. 15, 1913 (Harrisburg, PA: William Stanley Ray, State Printer, 1914), 28.
134. Commission chairman Winthrop Sargent was more blunt: Winthrop Sargent, "Letter of Transmittal," in Final Report of the Pennsylvania Chestnut Tree Blight Commission, Jan. 1 to Dec. 15, 1913, 9-13.
135. A Whole World Dying: The title of the chapter comes from a phrase used by Donald Davis in Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the Southern Appalachians (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000), 192.
136. Chestnut extract . . . the antidote for despair: From the Web site of the Dr. Edward Bach Centre in Mt. Vernon, England, http://www.bachcentre.com/centre/38/swchest.htm.
137. Chestnut products brought in some $2.5 million a year: Flippo Gravatt, The Chestnut Blight in Virginia (N.p.: Commonwealth of Virginia, 1914), 3. The present value is based on the Consumer Price Index.
138. "the chestnut stand of the southern Appalachians was doomed": G. F. Gravatt, "The Chestnut Blight in North Carolina," Chestnut and the Chestnut Blight in North Carolina, North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey: Economic Paper No. 56 (Raleigh, NC: N.p., 1925), 15.
139. This "death wave": P. L. Buttrick, quoted in Arthur Graves, "The Future of the Chestnut Tree in North America," Popular Science Monthly 84 (June 1914): 559.
140. In the years after the Civil War: Bowen S. Crandall, G. F. Gravatt, and Margaret Milburn Ryan, "Root Disease of Castanea Species and Some Coniferous and Broadleaf Nursery Stocks Caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi," Phytopathology 35 (March 1945): 166. The article remains one of the best sources of information on P. cinnamomi and was a primary source for this chapter.
141. about twenty-four miles a year: Gravatt, "Chestnut Blight in North Carolina," 15.
142. New Jersey . . . experts . . . turned up only about twenty living trees: "Chestnut Tree Is Facing Doom," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 3, 1924, 6.
143. In Connecticut . . . when scientists . . . needed a peck of nuts: C. F. Korstian, "The Tragedy of the Chestnut: How an Uncontrollable Pest Is Exterminating a Valuable Hardwood Species," Southern Lumberman 117 (Dec. 20, 1924): 180-81.
144. Pennsylvania was forced to bid farewell: "Huge Chestnut Felled by Dynamite," American Forestry 25 (Nov. 1919): 1484.
145. "What was formerly a majestic, soul-inspiring landmark": Charles F. Thurston, "Good Bye, Chestnuts," American Forestry 29 (Dec. 1923): 733.
146. "Will eating chestnuts by crackling log Wres": "Chestnut," Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1926, B4.
147. "You could just almost see [the trees] a'dyin' ": Jake Waldroop, quoted in Wigginton, FoxWre 6, 409.
148. "we could hear a heart rendering . . . 'thud'": William Banks, "My Life with the Chestnut," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 19 (Spring 2005): 19-20.
149. an area covering thirty-three million acres: Gravatt, "The Chestnut Blight in North Carolina," 17.
150. The trees could be used for their tannins even longer: Gravatt, "The Chestnut Blight in North Carolina," 22.
151. The extract companies had . . . found ways to glean tannin: Flippo Gravatt, Chestnut Blight, USDA Farmer's Bulletin No. 1641 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing OYce, 1930), 13-15.
152. "The best thing to be done is to chop down the good remaining chestnut trees": "Chestnut Trees Doomed," New York Times, Oct. 13, 1926, 10.
153. The leader of a New Jersey Boy Scout troop responded: "Chestnut Blight Not Yet Checked," New York Times, Sept. 12, 1926, X14.
154. A map produced by Gravatt in 1943 showed the scope of the pandemic: Russell Clapper and G. F. Gravatt, "The American Chestnut: Its Past, Present and Future," Southern Lumberman 167 (Dec. 15, 1943): 227-29.
155. Enough trees to Wll nine million acres: That estimate was made by Jesse D. Diller, "Chestnut Blight," USDA Forest Pest LeaXet 94 (March 1965), 1.
156. "You just can't imagine how much it changed the looks of the mountains": Jake Waldroop, quoted in Wigginton, FoxWre 6, 414.
157. when the chestnut trees tumbled: John Jay Morgan and Sara H. Schweitzer, "The Importance of Chestnut to the Eastern Wild Turkey," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 8 (Winter 1999-2000): 24-25.
158. a widespread aZiction known as oak decline: Steve Oak, "From the Bronx to Birmingham: Impact of Chestnut Blight and Management Practices on Forest Health Risks in the Southern Appalachian Mountains," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 16 (Fall 2002): 32-41. Also author interview with Oak, June 6, 2006.
159. Researchers who compared the amount of mast: Seth J. Diamond, Robert H. Giles, Jr., Roy L. Kirkpatrick, and Gary GriYn, "Hard Mast Production before and after the Chestnut Blight," Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 24 (2000): 198-99.
160. "the worst thing ever happened to this country": Walter Cole, interview by Charles Grossman, 1965, Oral History Collection of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
161. "We've never had a honey crop": Noel Moore, quoted in Wigginton, FoxWre 6, 403.
162. the dearth of chestnuts has hindered eVorts to restore various animals: Davis, Where There Are Mountains, 194.
163. "Man, I had the awfulest feeling": Quoted in Davis, Where There Are Mountains, 196.
164. leading Virginia to establish a eugenics program: Bill Baskerville, "Virginia Governor Apologizes for Forced Sterilization under Eugenics Law," Associated Press, May 2, 2002.
165. The spores attach themselves to the bark: Jesse Diller, Chestnut Blight, Forest Pest LeaXet 94 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1965), 2.
166. A writer in the New York Times cheered: "Chestnut Blight Not Yet Checked," Sept. 12, 1926, X14.
167. Graves spent months in 1911 touring Massachusetts: Conference Proceedings, 21, 221.
168. the blight brought a "summary termination" . . . to his experiments: Van Fleet, quoted in Graves, "The Future of the Chestnut Tree," 566.
169. "The most hopeful indications for chestnut in North America in the future": Graves, "The Future of the Chestnut Tree," 566.
170. After choosing a mother and father tree: Graves described the breeding methods in "Forest Tree Breeding," Economic Botany 2 (1948): 293-95.
171. "success would mean a shrieking genetic miracle": J. C. Furnas, "New Chestnuts for Old," American Forests (Jan. 1963): 47.
172. Graves wasn't the most meticulous of breeders: Interview with Sandra Anagnostakis, April 2005.
173. blight-resistant trees owed their good fortune to at least two genes: The exact number of genes involved in resistance is still not known.
174. Graves . . . began seeking "cooperators": Arthur Graves, "Breeding Work," 672.
175. They produced some ten thousand hybrids: Frederick Berry, "Chestnut Breeding in the United States Department of Agriculture," in MacDonald, Cech, Luchok, and Smith, Proceedings of the American Chestnut Symposium, 40.
176. One lot grew so fast: Amanda Ulm, "Remember the Chestnut," American Forests 54 (April 1948): 190-92.
177. crossing Wrst-generation Chinese-American hybrids with Chinese trees: G. Flippo Gravatt, "Chestnut Blight in Asia and North America," Unasylva 3 (Jan.-Feb. 1949): 6.
178. The reserve manager logged it in as B26: The tree's story is told in Shelly Stiles, ed., "Diary of the Clapper Tree," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 11 (Summer 1997): 15-22.
179. "hopeful forerunner of a great new crop": "What Goes on Here!" Women's Day (May 1965): 24-25.
180. a poetic tribute, parodying Longfellow's classic poem: Stiles, "Diary of the Clapper," 19.
181. Roy Owen, an eighty-four-year-old man from Terre Haute, Indiana: The correspondence is reprinted in "Roy J. Owen's Letters on the Clapper Tree," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 11 (Summer 1997): 22-24.
182. The breeding stock and hybrids . . . were all destroyed: Burnham, "The Restoration of the American Chestnut," 480.
183. Singleton irradiated the seeds: Burnworth, "A Brief History," 11.
184. Dietz and Singleton had about eighteen thousand viable seedlings: GriYn, "Blight Control," 25. 106 "the largest experimental planting of chestnut": Jaynes, "Project Village Smithy."
185. "Evil Tendencies Cancel": Robert Frost, A Further Range (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1936), 70.
186. "like admiring the Boston Strangler": Fred Hebard, quoted in Steve Nash, "A Man and His Tree," Washington Post Magazine, July 25, 2004, W18.
187. Some say it arrived on chestnut mine timbers: Rudolph Chelminski, "A Fungus Beats the Chestnut Blight at Its Own Game," Smithsonian 10 (June 1979): 97.
188. it sneaked in on chestnut trees planted in botanical gardens: This is Fulbright's belief.
189. the Laboratory of Biological Struggle: Chelminski, "Fungus," 97.
190. within ten years the blight epidemic there had ground to a halt: John E. Elliston, "Hypovirulence and Chestnut Blight Research: Fighting Disease with Disease," Journal of Forestry 79 (Oct. 1981): 657-60.
191. "The blight has been defeated by nature, not me": Quoted in Chelminski, "Fungus," 97.
192. Anagnostakis had begun working on her doctorate: Anagnostakis's story comes largely from an interview with the author, April 2005. See also Sandra Anagnostakis, "Chestnut Blight: The Classical Problem of an Introduced Pathogen," Mycologia 79 (Jan. 1987): 23-37.
193. The research team reported their Wndings in a landmark article in 1975: N. K. Van Alfen, R. A. Jaynes, S. L. Anagnostakis, and P. R. Day, "Chestnut Blight: Biological Control by Transmissible Hypovirulence in Endothia parasitica," Science 189 (Sept. 1975): 890-91.
194. It is no wonder one forest researcher declared: R. Phares, "New Challenges in Chestnut Research," in MacDonald, Cech, Luchok, and Smith, Proceedings of the American Chestnut Symposium, 29.
195. There were similar old groves: D.W. Fulbright, W. H. Weidlich, K. Z. HauXer, C. S. Thomas, and C. P. Paul, "Chestnut Blight and Recovering Chestnut Trees in Michigan," Canadian Journal of Botany 61 (1983): 3164.
196. One of the most heartening sites was a small woodlot: Sources for the story of the Michigan trees are M. Ford Cochran, "Back from the Brink," National Geographic (Feb. 1990): 138
197. Mike Toner, "Is This the Chestnut's Last Stand," National Wildlife, Oct.- Nov. 1985, 25-27
198. Fulbright et al., "Chestnut Blight," 3164-71
199. D.W. Fulbright and W. H. Weidlich, "Interactions of American Chestnut and Endothia parasitica in Michigan," Annual Report of the Northern Nut Growers Association 74 (1983): 74-81; interview with Fulbright, Oct. 2005.
200. This strain spread more readily: Forest Health Conditions in Wisconsin: Annual Report, 1997 (Madison: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 1997), 67.
201. By 2002, approximately six hundred trees in the stand were infected: Jane Cummings-Carlson, personal communication, Feb. 3, 2006.
202. its promise as a biological control is built on "a lot of hype": Milgroom, "Biological Control," 330; interview with the author, Dec. 2005.
203. he hated being called Charlie: Interview with Phil Rutter, June 2004.
204. The era became known as "the golden age of plant genetics": Interview with Ronald Phillips, plant geneticist at the University of Minnesota, June 2004.
205. "He'd be out in the Weld at daybreak": Interview with Larry Inman, June 2004.
206. "I could not believe what I was reading": Burnham, "A Minnesota Story."
207. Burnham called his colleague Norman Borlaug: Interview with Norman Borlaug, March 2006.
208. they surely would have tried backcross breeding: Charles Burnham, "Historical Overview of Chestnut Breeding in the United States," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 2 (Dec. 1987): 9-11.
209. he couldn't resist tweaking the young Turks: Charles R. Burnham, "The Restoration of the American Chestnut."
210. In 1981, Burnham published a letter: Charles R. Burnham, "Blight Resistant American Chestnut: There's Hope," Plant Disease 65 (June 1981): 459-60.
211. "You're wasting your time": Interview with Donald Willeke, May 2004.
212. each tree yielded two precious nuts: Burnham, "A Minnesota Story."
213. "It was an enthralling talk": Author interview with Jennifer Wagner, April 2006.
214. When friends and colleagues gathered for his ninetieth birthday: Dean RebuVoni, "He Wouldn't Give Up: Geneticist's Plan to Save American Chestnut Trees Finally Taking Root," Minneapolis Star- Tribune, Jan. 17, 1994.
215. "Dearly beloved!": Text of his talk provided by Phil Rutter. See also Phil Rutter, "President's Message," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 4 (1990): 4.
216. the Roundup Ready soybean: "Roundup Unready," New York Times, Feb. 19, 2003.
217. the Wrst transgenic tree, created in 1987: Scott A. Merkle and C. Joseph Nairn, "Hardwood Biotechnology," In Vitro Cellular Development and Biology-Plant 41 (Sept.-Oct. 2005): 602-19.
218. Industrial tree science: Robert L. Youngs, "Wood Science and Technology in North America," Forest Products Journal 53 (Nov./Dec. 2003): 12-20.
219. Forestry oVered guidance on how to plant trees: Alan Lucier, Maude Hinchee, and Rex B. McCullough, "Biotechnology and the Forest Products Industry," in Strauss and Bradshaw, The Bioengineered Forest, 15.
220. "Domestication has never been a simple one-way process": Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (New York: Random House, 2001), 196. I am indebted to Pollan for his clear discussion on natural selection and genetic technology.
221. a natural, single-gene mutation that arose in wheat: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1999), 120.
222. in other words, a giant block of wood: The image comes from Karen Charman, "The Shape of Forests to Come," World-Watch, May-June 2005, 24.
223. China has embraced this latter product: Mark Clayton, "Now, Bioengineered Trees Are Taking Root," Christian Science Monitor, March 10, 2005, http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0310/p14s02-sten.html.
224. One researcher hopes to use genetic technology: Hillary Rosner, "Turning Genetically Engineered Trees into Toxic Avengers," New York Times, Aug. 3, 2004.
225. A case in point is the Flavr-Savr tomato: Interview with Gurian-Sherman. The maker of the tomato, Calgene Inc., was bought out by Monsanto in 1996, and by 1998 the tomato was removed from the market.
226. breeders developed varieties of corn that were bred to be male-sterile: Burdon and Walter, "Exotic Pines," 64.
227. Oregon researchers working on transgenic trees found transformed seeds: Faith Campbell, Genetically Engineered Trees: Questions without Answers, American Lands Alliance, July 2000, http://www.americanlands.org/ archive.php?articleNo=old_1092427489.
228. extremist opponents of bioengineering had torched transgenic tree labs: Laura Tangley, "Words (and Axes) Fly over Transgenic Trees," Science
229. (April 6, 2001): 34-37
230. Robert F. Service, "Arson Strikes Research Labs and Tree Farm in PaciWc Northwest," Science 292 (June 1, 2001): 1622-23.
231. "Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up": Henry David Thoreau, "The Succession of Forest Trees," Excursions: Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 5 (New York: Houghton MiZin, 1906), 203.
232. "One of my great revelations was when I got poked in the eye": Quoted in Steve Nash, "A Man and His Tree," Washington Post Magazine, July 25, 2004. The magazine edited out the profanity.
233. It would gain further conWrmation in later analyses: Thomas L. Kubisiak, Frederick Hebard, et al., "Molecular Mapping of Resistance to Blight in an InterspeciWc Cross in the Genus Castanea," Phytopathology 87 (1997): 751-59.
234. In 1963, after a decade of searching: J. C. Furnas, "New Chestnuts for Old," American Forests (Jan. 1963): 23.
235. An outbreak of Phytophthora: Crandall, Gravatt, and Ryan, "Root Disease."
236. "that precious 'while' when you have done your part": Noelle Oxenhandler, "Fall from Grace," The New Yorker, June 16, 1997, 65-68. Quoted in William R. Jordan III, The SunXower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 77.
237. After examining third-generation backcross trees: Matthew Diskin, Kim Steiner, and Fred Hebard, "Recovery of American Chestnut Characteristics following Hybridization and Backcross Breeding to Restore Blight-Ravaged Castanea dentata," Forest Ecology and Management 223 (2006): 439.
238. "You cannot love game and hate predators": Aldo Leopold, Round River (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 145-46.
239. "we will build up an exhibit": Quoted in Peter Friederici, Nature's Restoration: People and Places on the Front Lines of Conservation (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2006), 90-92.
240. one expert counted up nearly two hundred working deWnitions: Interview with John Cairns, a restoration ecologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, June 2006.
241. "Pleistocene rewilding": Josh Donlan, Harry W. Greene, et al., "Re-wilding North America," Nature 436 (Aug. 18, 2005): 913-14.
242. restoration has . . . become big business: Mark Clayton, "Eco Firms See Growing ProWts," Christian Science Monitor, April 7, 2005.
243. Of more than 3,700 challenges to U.S. Forest Service plans: R.W. Malmsheimer, D. Keele, and D.W. Floyd, "National Forest Litigation in the US Courts of Appeal," Journal of Forestry 102 (March 2004): 20-25.
244. One famous example concerned a project known as Chicago Wilderness: Friederici, Nature's Restoration, 115-25. The full story of the Chicago prairie restoration project is told in William K. Stevens, Miracle under the Oaks: The Revival of Nature in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).
245. "A restorationist, like a parent": Quoted in Stevens, Miracle under the Oaks, 290.
246. The source of the trouble was a legal document: Information on the agreement and the debate over it comes from author interviews with Marshal Case, 2006
247. Hill Craddock, 2006
248. Bob LeVel, Dec. 2006; Ann LeVel, Dec. 2006; and Sandra Anagnostakis, Dec. 2006.
249. To that end, the group has adopted a detailed protocol: "TACF Adopts Guidelines for Testing Blight-Resistant American Chestnuts," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 18 (Spring 2004): 7-11.
250. breeding programs have a hard time maintaining "hereditary wildness": Hugh Irwin, "The Road to American Chestnut Restoration," Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation 16 (Spring 2003): 10.
251. His concern is not only that the hybrids won't thrive: Friederici, Nature's Restoration, 71-72.
252. "Where there are mountains, there are chestnuts": Quoted in Davis, Where There Are Mountains, 11.
253. "faking nature": Robert Elliott, "Faking Nature," Inquiry 25 (1982): 81-93. Elliott elaborated on the argument in a later book titled Faking Nature (London: Routledge Press, 1997).
254. American philosopher Eric Katz extends the argument: Eric Katz, "The Ethical SigniWcance of Human Intervention in Nature," Restoration and Management Notes 9 (1991): 90.
255. When we take on the far more challenging task of restoring a native landscape: William Jordan, The SunXower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 72.
256. species have come and gone: Scott Wiedensaul is the source for the grim statistics on species loss in his book, The Ghost with Trembling Wing: Science, Wishful Thinking and the Search for Lost Species (New York: North Point Press, 2002), 34-35.
257. we are now losing an estimated Wfty thousand species a year: Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson, The Biophilia Hypothesis (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993), 36-37.
258. U.S. government inspectors now intercept about Wfty-three thousand pathogens: Richard Mack, Predicting Invasions of Nonindigenous Plants and Plant Pests (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2002), 15.
259. to the tune of approximately $137 billion a year: Yvonne Baskin, A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines (Washington, D.C.: Shearwater Books, 2002), 4.
260. The most worrisome disease to surface: Chronology of sudden oak death based on stories in the San Francisco Chronicle between 1998 and 2006
261. Susan Freinkel, "If All the Trees Fall in the Forest," Discover 23 (Dec. 2002): 67-72; and interview with Steven Oak of the U.S. Forest Service Southern Appalachian oYce, June 2006.
262. Many cultures contain a notion of a cosmic tree: Nathaniel Altman, Sacred Trees (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994), 30.
263. The woolly adelgid has caused such a severe decline: Quoted in Campbell and Schlarbaum, Fading Forests II, 78.
264. The losses they produce accumulate over time: Phyllis Windle, "The Ecology of Grief," Orion (Winter 1994): 22.
265. "One of the penalties of an ecological education": Leopold, Round River, 165.
266. "When you have tree species after tree species disappearing": Craig Lorimer, quoted in Freinkel, "If All the Trees," 73.
267. Windle discusses her sorrow: Windle, "The Ecology of Grief," 20.
268. As the late Stephen Jay Gould pointed out: Stephen Jay Gould, quoted in David Orr, "Love it or Lose It: The Coming Biophilia Revolution" in Kellert and Wilson, The Biophilia Hypothesis, 425.
269. returning the tree to the forest can help redeem a host of human errors: The subsequent list of potential beneWts comes courtesy of an interview with Marshal Case, July 2006.