Chestnuts Roasting…

Most Americans are familiar with the chestnut from only two sources.  One of them is the line, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” from the song of the same name, which was made famous by the inimitable Nat King Cole.

Unfortunately, the majority of Americans today are not aware of what we lost with the near extinction of the American chestnut in the first half of the twentieth century.

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My grandparents were born in the late 1800s and thus lived at the end of the chestnut tree’s reign as king of the American forest.  I wish I had thought to ask them about the tree. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t.

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When I speak of the chestnut being the king of the American forest, it’s not idle hyperbole.  The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was native to a huge swath of real estate from New England southwest to Mississippi.  Within that range, up until the early 20th century, chestnut trees made up an astounding one-in-four of the trees in the eastern forest. 

Yes, 25%.

It wasn’t king merely because of numbers or population density.  Oh, no, it certainly was not.

Although there were other members of the same family, the American chestnut tree was considered the finest species of chestnut in the world.

Wildlife within its range relied on the nuts for much of their fall diet.  Bears ate lots of chestnuts to fatten up for the winter and squirrels hid them away for the cold months.  Wild turkeys and the now extinct passenger pigeons feasted on them.  Whitetail deer loved them. 

Today’s outdoor enthusiasts know that whitetails can be depended upon to frequent the shade of white oaks when there is an abundant crop of their acorns.  However, in one study, it was found that, where chestnuts were available, the deer would choose them 99 to one!

The trees grew fast and produced a dependable yearly crop of nuts, and do so in abundance.  This was one of the reasons that forests within its range were able to sustain such high population densities of wildlife.  Before Europeans arrived on the continent, the American chestnut’s leaves, with their high nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium were a valuable food for browsing wildlife.  Those same chemicals, brought up from the depths of the soil by the chestnut trees, enriched the soil as fallen trees and leaves decayed and released them into the soil.  This, of course, benefited other plants, as well as animals and microorganisms.

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Besides eating the nuts, Native Americans used various parts of the American chestnut to treat whooping cough, heart conditions, and chaffed skin, as well as other ailments.

When Europeans settled in the new world, they found that many livestock species could be set free to feed on the abundant nuts.  The nuts were often included in many popular recipes, such as “chestnuts and sausages,” “beef and onions,” and “green peas and veal.”  Also, the nuts were an important economic resource.  They were sold on the streets of cities and towns.  Vendors roasted them to bring out the flavor, which also sent the delicious smell wafting outward.  That scent was said to be recognizable from blocks away, enticing hungry customers.

Because the nuts ripened late in the year, they were readily available around Christmas-time.  Since fire was commonly used for home heating, roasting chestnuts in a pan or basket over an open fire would produce a tasty treat while stimulating the family’s appetites with the seductive aroma.  Thus, the first line of Nat King Cole’s song, written in 1944, would awaken pleasant memories among listeners who were alive when the nuts were plentiful.

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But there was more to the tree than just the nuts.  The chestnut tree’s wood was straight-grained, strong, and easy to saw and split.  It also lacked the radial end-grain found in most other hardwoods.  The January 1888 issue of Orchard and Garden spoke of the American chestnut as being “superior in quality to any found in Europe”.

Mature trees often grew straight and branch-free for 50 to 100 feet, averaging up to five-feet in diameter. The American chestnut grew faster than other trees, such as oaks, but, like oaks, were rich in tannins, making the wood highly resistant to decay.  This made it a wood valued for shingles, housebuilding, split-rail fences, plywood, as well as telegraph, electric, and later, telephone, poles.  The wood was valuable for paper-making and furniture building, and the tannins, when extracted from the bark, were used for tanning leather.

But the heyday of the American chestnut began its downward spiral in the early years of the 20th century.  Some Asiatic chestnut trees infected with the Asian bark fungus (now commonly called the chestnut blight) were brought in to this country.  In 1904, the fungus was discovered on some trees on Long Island, New York.

The American chestnut proved to be highly susceptible to the blight.  Within 40 years almost four billion trees succumbed to the disease.

Yes, that’s billion, with a “B”.  Remember, that was about one-in-four trees in much of the country.

It looked as if the day of the American chestnut had come to an end.

And it almost did.

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Luckily for the beloved tree, here-and-there a tree was found still-alive.  Some survived simply because they were too far from others of their kind.  Others possessed a resistance to the fungus responsible for the blight.

My grandparents may have been alive in a time of four billion chestnut trees, but I was born into a world with only about 100 surviving American chestnut trees.  Many of the trees that had succumbed to the blight continued (and some still do) to sprout from the roots and live for a few years before being killed back by the blight once more.  They become fewer by the year.

However, some, very rare, trees continued to grow, unaffected by the disease.  A few, heroic organizations have taken it upon themselves to try to save the tree from total extinction.  The American Chestnut Foundation is one of those.  It is a nonprofit group of volunteers who work to cross resistant species of chestnuts, like the Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima), with some of the few resistant American chestnuts in an attempt to produce an almost pure strain of resistant Castanea dentata.  Their goal is to return the species to its former range.

Thankfully, they have experienced some success.

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Though I am not a member of any of the organizations, I have become enamored with the idea of growing some American chestnut trees.  I want to entice wildlife to enjoy their fallen nuts and offer our family more viewing opportunities…and I want to try chestnuts roasted on an open fire.

Last fall I bought about 25 chestnuts of the Dunstan cultivar.  The Dunstan variety has proven to be blight resistant while maintaining the high nut production and delicious taste.  They usually start to bear within 3 to 5 years of germination.

I did everything according to instruction, carefully nesting the seeds in peat moss, moistening it, and putting it in a Ziploc bag, which I placed in the refrigerator so that the nuts would germinate in safety (away from squirrels, mice, and other nut-lovers).

I checked them several times before I basically forgot about them. 

Oops.

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Thankfully, I didn’t forget about them completely.  Whenever I got into the refrigerator, I looked at the bag.  I saw one or two starting to sprout but I waited for more.

When I finally gave up waiting, I took the bag out and planted all the nuts in a large pot, according to instructions.  In the process I found that many of them had actually sprouted, sending down short taproots.  Annie and I watched the pot, which I had put on the ground below the porch swing where she and I enjoy a relaxed cup of coffee on many Sunday mornings.

Nothing.  Nothing, nothing, NOTHING.

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My sweet Annie took pity on me and my disappointment.  She surprised me by purchasing two, two-year-old Dunstan chestnut seedlings.  American chestnuts cannot self-pollinate so it takes at least two chestnut trees to produce nuts.  I happily (well, kind of happily) dug holes in our gravelly hillside, and planted the seedlings.  Every day, when I went out to gather eggs, I looked over at the two seedlings to see if they had sprouted leaves.

Nothing.

However…

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A few days ago, Annie asked me, “Did you notice that you’ve got a little chestnut tree growing in your flowerpot?”

I rushed to look and there, standing proudly about a foot tall, was a chestnut seedling sporting six healthy green leaves.  A couple weeks later, another little chestnut tree rose above the potting soil.

Annie and I will transplant them soon…when we are sure none of the other nuts in the flower pot are going to sprout.  We’ll plant it near the two seedlings Annie gave me.  Yes, just days ago they both began to leaf out.

Hopefully, they will all four survive and we will have our own little grove of four chestnut trees, and they will all be blight resistant.

And at least two will be Scott resistant too.

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Perhaps, in a few years, when our grandkids are here for Christmas, we can treat them to chestnuts roasting on and open fire.

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OK, if you found all that interesting, you may like some of this extra stuff!

Chestnut Hill Outdoors is one company which sells Dunstan chestnut saplings.  Their website is https://chestnuthilloutdoors.com/shop/.  If you are interested in planting a few chestnut trees yourself, check them out.  Maybe you, too, can be part of the resurrection of the American chestnut.

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As a boy growing up, my mom and dad had a print of a painting which depicted a scene from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem, “The Village Blacksmith.

                Yes, that poem is the second source for most Americans’ familiarity with the chestnut tree.  The beautiful tree in the painting was a source of wonder for a little boy who would grow up to write a blog.

I intended to reference the poem and the painting in this post.  Unfortunately, as I was doing my research, I found a quote of Mr. Longfellow in which he admitted that the tree overlooking the village blacksmith he used to watch, awestruck, as a child was not an American chestnut (Castanea dentata) at all; it was a horsechestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum).  The two are not even closely related.

Dang, another childhood belief crushed.

Oh, well.  Here is the poem anyway.  It’s still a good one.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Village Blacksmith

Under the spreading chestnut tree

The village smithy stants;

The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hands;

And the muscles of his brawny arms

Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,

His face is like the tan;

His brow is wet with honest sweat,

He earns whate’er he can,

And looks the whole world in the face,

For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,

You can hear his bellows blow;

You can hear him swing his heavy sledge

With measured beat and slow,

Like a sexton ringing the village bell,

When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school

Look in at the open door;

The love to see the flaming forge,

And hear the bellows roar,

And watch the burning sparks that fly

Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,

And sits among his boys;

He hears the parson pray and preach,

He hears his daughter’s voice,

Singing in the village choir,

And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,

Singing in Paradise!

He needs must think of her once more,

How in the grave she lies;

And with his hard, rough hand he wipes

A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,–rejoicing,– sorrowing,

Onward through life he goes;

Each morning sees some task begin,

Each evening sees it close;

Something attempted, something done,

Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,

For the lesson thou hast taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of life

Our fortunes must be wrought;

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

Each burning deed and thought!

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