New Computer Joy, and Long-Lost Trees
Jul. 20th, 2011 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vulgarweedThis MacBook is rocking my world. Aside from the internet connectivity, I had completely not even thought about the joy of having a battery that works for more than 10 minutes, not to mention the ability to watch videos that are longer than a YouTube kitteh clip.
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Unrelated, I suppose, is that I just finished reading American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree, by Susan Freinkel.
Once upon a time, there was a tree called the American Chestnut. One in 4 trees in Appalachia was one. It grew tall and huge, produced vast quantities of nuts that wildlife, livestock, and humans relied on, and it produced great wood. Most of the century-old cabins and barns and fences you see in that region are made of chestnut, because it just.doesn't.rot.
Then the blight came, imported accidentally on Chinese chestnuts (which had evolved immunity). It was first spotted in New York in 1904. The American Chestnut was almost completely vanished and on the edge of extinction by the 1940s; it's estimated that between 3 and 4 billion trees died. But chestnut roots aren't affected by the blight, and they have a lot of energy in them--the woods were still full of young sprouts and saplings rising from the roots of long-dead trees when I was a kid in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the 70s and 80s. There were still plenty of chestnut leaves to be found and pressed into albums along with the oak and tulip poplar and maple and locust and other common trees. They will always get infected with the blight and die before maturity, but they still keep popping up. There are fewer of these sprouts now, but they're still around in the tree's historic range.
There is also a scientific effort to bring the tree back using backcross breeding to get blight-resistance genes from the Chinese chestnut while still keeping majority American characteristics; there's also a controversial one involving transgenic trees. The American Chestnut Foundation is kind of the mothership for recovery efforts, research, and volunteer pollination and planting work.
I can't explain yet why I'm so fascinated and moved by this, but I am. Childhood memories, I suppose. Comes of being a park ranger's daughter; I'm pretty sure I knew about the chestnuts and the blight before I started kindergarten. I just hadn't thought about it for a long time. Probably Tolkien too, perhaps that's why the Ents have always been so vivid and touching to me. Maybe there's a story of my own percolating in there somewhere. Regardless, I just wanted to share it.
Chances are, you've never seen a mature American Chestnut. (There are a few, very isolated) But if you'd lived east of the Mississippi just 80 years ago, they would have been everywhere and you almost certainly would have tasted their fruit.
```
Unrelated, I suppose, is that I just finished reading American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree, by Susan Freinkel.
Once upon a time, there was a tree called the American Chestnut. One in 4 trees in Appalachia was one. It grew tall and huge, produced vast quantities of nuts that wildlife, livestock, and humans relied on, and it produced great wood. Most of the century-old cabins and barns and fences you see in that region are made of chestnut, because it just.doesn't.rot.
Then the blight came, imported accidentally on Chinese chestnuts (which had evolved immunity). It was first spotted in New York in 1904. The American Chestnut was almost completely vanished and on the edge of extinction by the 1940s; it's estimated that between 3 and 4 billion trees died. But chestnut roots aren't affected by the blight, and they have a lot of energy in them--the woods were still full of young sprouts and saplings rising from the roots of long-dead trees when I was a kid in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the 70s and 80s. There were still plenty of chestnut leaves to be found and pressed into albums along with the oak and tulip poplar and maple and locust and other common trees. They will always get infected with the blight and die before maturity, but they still keep popping up. There are fewer of these sprouts now, but they're still around in the tree's historic range.
There is also a scientific effort to bring the tree back using backcross breeding to get blight-resistance genes from the Chinese chestnut while still keeping majority American characteristics; there's also a controversial one involving transgenic trees. The American Chestnut Foundation is kind of the mothership for recovery efforts, research, and volunteer pollination and planting work.
I can't explain yet why I'm so fascinated and moved by this, but I am. Childhood memories, I suppose. Comes of being a park ranger's daughter; I'm pretty sure I knew about the chestnuts and the blight before I started kindergarten. I just hadn't thought about it for a long time. Probably Tolkien too, perhaps that's why the Ents have always been so vivid and touching to me. Maybe there's a story of my own percolating in there somewhere. Regardless, I just wanted to share it.
Chances are, you've never seen a mature American Chestnut. (There are a few, very isolated) But if you'd lived east of the Mississippi just 80 years ago, they would have been everywhere and you almost certainly would have tasted their fruit.
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-20 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-20 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-21 12:48 am (UTC)I relates to your chestnut story. I was visiting central park in nyc w my mom recently and she startled me by suddenly going into spasms of ecstasy...sqealing oh my god like 5 times. I thought she spotted george clooney or something lol. Turns out it was cuz mom adores the American elm from childhood memories as well and when we went to central park neither of us knew that because of cp's isolation that a ton of american elms there were never affected by Dutch elm disease.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-21 03:36 am (UTC)Oh man, American elms. I remember in the 70s when the elm trees around my grandparents' house in the Baltimore suburbs started dying. That was sad - we all loved those trees. I'm glad your mom got to see the ones in Central Park. Tompkins Square Park has them too. And they're making a cautious comeback in Chicago.
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Date: 2011-07-22 12:19 am (UTC)Yeah when I actually started studying the elms she was squealing over I realized how amazing they are. I grew up only a few hours away from where my mom did and im pretty sure these were the first I ever saw. Which is pretty sad. :-(
no subject
Date: 2011-07-25 06:02 pm (UTC)The chestnut story is both sad and hopeful. Sad in that the great Eastern forests were so quickly changed, and hopeful because perhaps crossbreeding will allow us to get back what we've lost. First the American Chestnut, then the American Elm, and now most of our native ash species are being devastated by the Emerald Ash Borer. When will it stop?