Upper Valley conservationists hope to bring back the American chestnut

GRANTHAM — New London conservationists are eagerly awaiting the first nuts from their crop of about 100 American chestnut trees, as their counterparts in Grantham embark on a similar adventure to preserve the so-called “redwoods of the East.”

The work is in collaboration with the American Chestnut Foundation Vermont/New Hampshire chapter to try to bring back the trees that were native across the eastern United States in huge numbers until a blight all but wiped them out starting in the late-1800s. Before the trees were decimated, they not only produced ideal wood for building, but the nuts were a key food source for wild animals, farm animals and people.

“I don’t think you realize just reading about it the significance of this blight, 4 billion trees died and that was 25% of the Appalachian Forest so that’s a pretty significant loss,” New London Conservation Commission Chairman Bob Brown said in an interview. “Especially such a wonderful tree and wood, it’s strong, it’s rot resistant, they’re very big… That lumber was used for everything from railroad ties to fine furniture, so we’re hoping someday to get some of those big trees back.”

It’s a slow process, but after nine years of work, the New London Conservation Commission is tending about 100 chestnut trees that its members have planted in three orchards around town.

Later this summer, they hope to double that number when they transfer almost 100 more saplings from a greenhouse into permanent homes, Brown said.

While some of New London’s trees now stretch 8-feet tall they’ve got a long way to go. The slow-growing trees have yet to produce any chestnuts. But as none of the trees have shown any sign of blight, they will start producing “hopefully pretty quick,” Brown said.

Meanwhile, the Grantham Conservation Commission has been tending a group of saplings since the spring. They planted their first 23 trees in the conserved Fisher Lot of the Grantham Northwest Forests on Sunday.

The American Chestnut Foundation is a national organization working to restore the tree to its native range by breeding and spreading blight-resistant nuts. The local Vermont/New Hampshire chapter plays “mostly a consultative role” with local partners like conservation commissions, former chapter President Evan Fox said in an interview. Fox recently stepped down in anticipation of a move from Barnard to Pennsylvania.

Conservation commissions like those in New London and Grantham make “ideal” partners for the chapter because they often have their own committed labor forces and access to public land.

Once local groups are able to tend their trees and get them to produce chestnuts, then the more active part of the chapter’s work begins. They will identify blight-resistant trees and cross them with other strong trees in the region to hopefully produce pure, blight-resistant American chestnut trees, Fox said.

Over the years, New London has become the chapter’s biggest partner and their success has helped spread the project to Grantham, Fox said.

“It’s a little bit contagious,” Fox said. “Once you get in one town and everybody sees the trees and sees everything it’s like: ‘Oh we should do that.”

Although the Grantham group modeled its effort after New London, the project lead, Jeff Walla, first became interested in American Chestnuts when a neighbor pointed out that there was one on his property. Walla, who is also a woodworker, then started learning about the trees and the New London restoration project.

“We do enough in forest management where we’re cutting down trees, it’s very rare that we add back trees and this is an opportunity for us to be able to do that and also to help with the effort to find a blight-resistant chestnut tree,” Walla said in an interview last week.

Originally, the group’s first crop of trees was scheduled to be planted in the early fall, but after becoming “stressed out” in an overheated greenhouse, they had to get them in the ground sooner than expected, Walla said.

The saplings, which are all between about 8 and 20 inches tall, were starting to turn brown around the edges of the leaves but are still showing new growth.

Growing chestnut trees is “not for the faint of heart,” Fox said.

It takes at least seven years for a tree to start flowering and producing chestnuts. He described the growing habits as “sleep, creep, leap” because in the first two years the trees mostly grow down to build a root system. After two years, they might only be about 1½-feet tall, and then in the third year they will start to “leap and grow up like a tree.”

The slow start can be discouraging and make it hard to tell if the tree is healthy, Fox said.

Once the trees start to grow upwards, they’re faced with all kinds of new threats such as deer that “eat chestnut leaves like lettuce” and the blight that is still prolific, Fox said. The blight causes sections of the tree’s bark and wood to die, creating spots called cankers, which then prevent water and nutrients from spreading through the tree and kill them in one to three years.

When planting the trees, volunteers lay out weed barriers and mulch as well as a “tree collar” and caging system that goes around the tree and extends a few inches underground to protect from critters.

The conservation projects also are an educational opportunity, Brown and Walla said. In New London, this looks like signage at the three orchards that explain the project. Brown also has a long-term goal of planting in more visible locations such as the town common.

“It would be nice to have a noticeable population of chestnut trees back again,” Brown said.

Once the project gets further underway in Grantham, Walla hopes to work with community partners like the Grantham Village School to educate the community about the trees, their history and how to help them thrive.

Clare Shanahan can be reached at cshanahan@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.