Among many tribes, the Indigenous word for chestnut was similar: chinkapin, chinquapin, chincapin, chincopin, and chechinquamin (as translated into European languages). The chestnut tree was fundamental to the livelihood and culture of both Indigenous people and European-Americans.
Even river water quality declined since nutrient-rich chestnut leaves provided the base of the food chain for aquatic macroinvertebrates (bugs) and the fish that eat them. Insect species suffered, and the American chestnut moth became extinct without its only food source. Wildlife perished up and down the food chain, decreasing the abundance of squirrel, deer, cavity-nesting birds, Cooper’s hawks, cougars, and bobcats. The loss of the American chestnut caused an ecological cascade that drastically altered the population dynamics of the forest. Even the soil is bolstered by the chestnut tree, because its leaves contain more nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium than other trees. The leaves of American chestnuts are a preferred food for insect larvae and caterpillars, which in turn are eaten by other animals such as fish and birds. Every autumn, the plentiful burs would open up and nuts would fall to the ground, feeding wild turkeys, passenger pigeons (now extinct), blue jays, black bears, deer, racoons, squirrels, and chipmunks. Each pollinated female flower grew into a spiny capsule called a bur that contains three nuts. After the last frosts (usually late June), chestnut trees would produce long white male flower stalks called catkins that feed honeybees and other pollinators, and pollinate small female flowers on neighboring chestnut trees. The American chestnut was a foundation species, shaping the structure and function of an entire ecological community. Today, the remaining chestnuts persist as small stump sprouts on the forest floor and nearly all die back from blight before they can flower and reproduce. It would take more than five people to link their hands around the base of one tree. Some of the largest chestnuts on the western slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains grew as high as 130 feet, with trunks over 10 feet wide. The average height of a mature forest chestnut was 100-105 feet, with an average trunk diameter five to eight feet wide. hikers are uniquely positioned to help in this effort.Ĭalled “the redwood of the East,” the American chestnut was the largest tree in eastern North America. Mature chestnuts are effectively absent from today’s forests, their population reduced to small sprouts, but work is underway to bring them back, and A.T.
shelters from some of the last available chestnut wood.īefore the blight, the American chestnut tree was incredibly valuable to the ecology, culture, and economy of Appalachia. The CCC constructed many of the first A.T.
Picture the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews of the 1930s digging new trail through hillsides of dying, dead, or cut-down chestnut trees, weaving the trail around fat tree stumps. forests) to functional extinction, meaning the population cannot reproduce enough to sustain itself.Ĭhestnut blight was accidentally introduced in New York City in 1904 and spread outward through the Appalachians over the course of 40 years. Chestnut blight, a disease caused by the airborne fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, reduced the population of American chestnut trees from four billion (one-quarter of all the trees in eastern U.S. American chestnut trees, the largest and most abundant trees in the forest, were dying en masse. Photo courtesy of The American Chestnut Foundation.Īs the Appalachian Trail (A.T.) was first being built, the forests along the Trail were dramatically changing.
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