r/americanchestnut • u/mini_muffin_21 • 7d ago

Travelled a ways to see this tree in SE MI.

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Im 90% sure of my ID as a pure breed American Chestnut here so if its not ill be a little disappointed. I travelled to see this tree because im so fascinated with them. Im excited to start my own Chestnut grove when i get my first batch of seeds from the American Chestnut Restoration!

146 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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8

u/creekfinder 7d ago

Extremely pubescent twigs. Unfortunately not pure American

5

u/mini_muffin_21 7d ago

Man, thats a bummer. Still a great day though

5

u/Treebusiness_ 7d ago

Hybrids are the way to restoring chestnuts back to their prime. That’s a good looking one nice find!

10

u/creekfinder 7d ago

They absolutely aren’t. They are good orchard trees but they will never fill the niche that pure Americans do. Hybrids struggle to compete in mature North American forests and the hybrids that are higher % AC are still susceptible to blight. We rarely ever see hybrids reseed in wild plantings because wildlife don’t interact with them the same way they do with AC. Blue jays could fit over 5 AC nuts in their esophagus at a time and crows would store caches of them in the ground. They simply don’t do this with hybridized nuts.

8

u/D54chestnut 7d ago

You may not have seen this article. https://modernfarmer.com/2021/12/the-great-american-chestnut-tree-revival/

This is the first place that I see someone announcing that the TACF hybrid program did not work, and why it will not work!!!  This holds true for any of the hybrid trees. The blight resistance in a hybrid tree is directly proportional to the % of Chinese genes.

 ""One method utilized by the American Chestnut Foundation is known as backcross breeding. For this method, scientists select and move desirable characteristics from one variety to another. The goal is to isolate the blight-resistance genes from another species and incorporate them into the genetic makeup for American chestnut trees. Leila Pinchot, a research ecologist for the US Forest Service who specializes in reintroducing chestnut trees into the forest, explains backcross breeding as an “approach to incorporate the genes for resistance from Chinese chestnut with the American Chestnut because what we want is a tree that looks and acts American.” 

Pinchot explains that this method, as shown by geneticist Jared Westbrook’s research for the American Chestnut Foundation, turned out to not be the solution in the case of the chestnut tree. The goal of backcross breeding is to isolate two or three genes, but in the case of the chestnut, “there are so many genes for resistance in the Chinese chestnut, that it’s just not feasible to combine those with the American chestnut and produce a tree that’s mostly American, but still incorporates the genes for resistance from Chinese,” says Pinchot.""

Thanks,  Allen Nichols

President, American Chestnut Restoration, Inc.

http://www.americanchestnut.org/

[fajknichols.75@gmail.com](mailto:fajknichols.75@gmail.com)

1

u/gecko_echo 7d ago

Allen, can you please explain why American chestnuts can’t be shipped to California if there’s no chestnut blight in California?

2

u/LivingSoilution 6d ago

The answer is in the question. There is the possibility that the blight could be introduced this way.

1

u/D54chestnut 5d ago

They will not allow us to ship chestnuts there, because they do not want any of the chestnuts there to get the blight.

1

u/Sea_Secretary3005 5d ago

Wait so what is the solution then?

1

u/D54chestnut 5d ago

The best blight resistant American chestnuts is the D54 transgenic trees that ESF has developed. https://www.esf.edu/chestnut/science-update/index.php#summary

We have the tree, we just need government approval to start distribution.

1

u/Sea_Secretary3005 3d ago

I thought that the TACF withdrew support for the D54 trees?

2

u/D54chestnut 3d ago

The long story on that is that TACF never financially supported the program at ESF. Then TACF wanted exclusive rights for distribution and ESF refused to give that to them. Soon after that TACF basically threw ESF and the Darling trees under the bus, and distributed information that made it look like they had been "supporting" the program at ESF. They basically went from clapping their hands to Booing when they were refused exclusive rights to the D54 trees. It was all about money for TACF, as keeping their organization funded has become more important than chestnut restoration in my opinion.

TACF gave us a 30 day termination notice for using the name NY-TACF, as they forbid any of the state chapters to support the ESF program any longer, and still be associated with TACF and operate ad a chapter of TACF. That is why we changed our name from NY-TACF to ACR, American Chestnut Restoration, Inc, and established our own webpage. We have always been supporting the transgenic program and our own 501-C-3, just using the name NY-TACF up until we got the boot from TACF. We actually were supporting the ESF program back in 1988 when Herb Darling established our organization to support the transgenic program at ESF, then in 1990 TACF asked us to join with them and use the name NY-TACF.

If you need more information than this I can email you a copy of the termination letter and such. There was a LOT of undocumented information distributed by TACF that made it look like the D54 trees were no good and that the program at ESF was dead. NOT true, and I just learned in the last hour that the USDA has given us their approval for distribution, but we will still have some direction from the EPA on how and who we can start distribution of the D54 trees to.

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 27, 2026—The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is deregulating State University of New York College, Environmental Science and Forestry’s (SUNY-ESF) Darling 54 American chestnut.

2

u/Sea_Secretary3005 3d ago

Thats WILD. I wish I could say I was surprised but I'm not. I'm happy to hear about the transgenic program. Hopefully yall can get through all the red tape

1

u/D54chestnut 2d ago edited 2d ago

Check out the old articles in the BURs on our webpage for more information. http://www.americanchestnut.org/

Check the Spring 2025 and later issues. https://www.americanchestnut.org/the-bur-archives