515- OUR ONCE PROLIFIC AMERICAN CHESTNUT TREES!...WILL THEY EVER MAKE A COMEBACK?.....

A) A natural history commentary: suggest you type in "American Chestnut Foundation" ('google') and uncover some neat background on the American chestnut before we proceed...thanks.
B) In our early 20th century forests, especially in the East, American Chestnut trees were the strong, straight and TALL trees in the woods. The saplings were sooo determinted to raise to the sunshine, they had to be tall and grow sturdily.
If you ever drive through our National Forests, you'll sometimes discover, looking carefully, still-standing chestnut zig-zag fences protecting what once was a cabin or mountain farmhouse...after all these years!
C) Your grandparents remembered roastin' chestnuts over an open fireplace. As a matter of fact, isn't there a neat CHRISTMAS song about "....roasting chestnuts on....?"
D) They are, ever soooo slowly. Our American chestnut is being "mixed" with a succesful blight resistant chestnut from another part of the world to create one that is going head to head to battle the blight that devastated our American chestnut decades ago!!
E) Next time you're out and about our Virginia's Blue Ride mts. and Appalachians, Blue Ridge Parkway, NOICE the old wooden fences still ambling along the two-lane roads in those mountains.....betcha they're the pre-blight American chestnut fences...betcha! NOW YOU KNOW.....