The American Chesnut Story

On eBay recently, I found a piece by Amphora, one of the workshops out of Turn Teplitz in what was Bohemia pre-World War I. It was a small flower bowl embellished with a chesnut leaves and fruits, and colored in subtle whites, pinks, greens and golds. I fell in love with it, recreated it first in dark clay as a rustic piece but it didn’t color up the way I wanted.

This week, I set out to sculpt the design on a large, wheel thrown, lidded pot. A fellow member of our pottery collective asked me about the design, and corrected me: of course, the Turn Teplitz piece was based on a European chesnut, not an American chesnut as I had asserted.

It turns out, this guy has a low-key tree obsession, and has been following, “The American Chesnut” story for some time. Our conversation reminded me that I too had seen that New York Times Magazine story on the Herculean efforts to hybridize a blight-tolerant specimen and reintroduce it to the country.

Once among the most prolific, important and beloved of trees in the United States, the American Chesnut ranged from Georgia to Maine, providing a broad canopy and available, nutrient-dense fruits to woods and backyards throughout the range. Additionally, the tree grew tall and straight and branch-free for as long as 50 feet: it was beloved of loggers who could mill a truckload of long, straight boards from a single tree. American chesnut trees were used for telephone poles, railroad ties and other heavy uses; they were light weight, straight-grained, and rot free.

The blight came in 1904, and by 1950, the tree was almost completely wiped out.

There are important efforts underway to restore the tree. You can visit The American Chesnut Foundation to learn how you can help, where to get seedlings, and why you should plant. For the New York Times article from April, 2020, entitled, “Can Genetic Engineering Bring Back the American Chestnut?” , go here (there is a paywall).