People tried all sorts of things to stop the spread: spraying with various chemicals that had worked on other pests, even cutting down mile-wide swaths of trees as a sort of firebreak against the fungus. The Asian trees were blight resistant, but the fungus spread unchecked among the defenseless American trees. The pathogen had traveled over the oceans on shipments of imported Japanese chestnut trees. Experts at the New York Botanical Garden had received hundreds of letters, "containing almost piteous appeals for help from people whose trees were dying." "The wail of the chestnut tree lover is heard from all parts of New York, Long Island and adjacent country," wrote the Times in another 1908 story, oozing with helplessness and distress. It was the "most rapid and destructive" fungus known to the world, according to the Times.Ī chestnut trunk bulging with blight at the TACF orchard in Montgomery County. In just a few years, the chestnut blight had killed thousands of the valuable timber trees, an economic loss of $5 to $10 million. "All the chestnut trees in the United States are doomed to destruction," wrote the New York Times, as efforts to contain the blight were stymied. area, with reports coming in from Maryland and Virginia. Affected trees succumbed quickly.īy 1908, blight had made its way to the D.C. The zoo's forester found small orange-red dots on the bark of chestnut trees, and cankers encircling the trunks. The story of the American chestnut's demise starts in 1904, at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. Nowadays, the "redwood of the East" very rarely grows large enough to flower and bear fruit. But the roots can live on, repeatedly sending up new sprouts, only to have them knocked down after a few years. When chestnut blight attacks, it girdles the tree's trunk, cutting off nutrients and killing everything above. "That's the tree trying to make another go at it," says Popkin. This small tree is what is known as a stump sprout - a young tree growing from old roots. The chestnut is identifiable by its sharply saw-toothed leaves (beeches have much shallower serrations, while chestnut oaks have rounded serrations.) The tree he's stopped at is a completely unremarkable sapling, blending in with nearby beech and chestnut oaks, which have similar leaves. Popkin is a local science and environmental writer who leads occasional tree walks. "This is a tree, I'm sure thousands of people have passed and never paid any attention to," says Gabriel Popkin, pausing at one of the chestnut trees. Leaves of an American chestnut growing in Rock Creek Park near Carter Barron Amphitheatre.
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