New orchard of chestnut trees begins on Cherokee territory
CLARISSA DONNELLY-DEROVEN, Asheville Citizen Times
May 23, 2021
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ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) Imagine waking up 150 years ago, opening your window and looking out onto the Southern Appalachians. Within view would be any one of the billions of American chestnut trees that once covered the landscape. Places that are now considered coal country were chestnut country.
Today, not so much. The tree is considered functionally extinct, thanks to a fungus imported in on a tree from Japan in the late 1800s. The airborne fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica, flings its spores onto the American chestnut until its bark develops sickly looking blisters that soon spread throughout its body, destroying the tree’s ability to grow tall enough to reproduce.