![]() With your help we intend to restore this iconic species to Maine’s landscape, its wildlife, and its people. After five to seven years, though, its off to the races. ![]() The shelters also reduce the need for pruning. During the harvesting, Wayne introduced his neighboring property owners, Richard Nietzel and John Laudon. Wayne, Chris, and Larry were all saddened by the loss but ecstatic to together begin this journey of second life for the trees. 'It helps trees grow and start producing nuts faster in two to four years vs. In November 2020, Larry and Chris began harvesting the American Chestnuts on the Helming’s property. The chapter’s goals are to: 1) Protect, conserve, preserve, and propagate trees from the remaining native American chestnut populations in Maine 2) Restore the American chestnut to a place of ecological and economic importance and self-sustainability throughout their original range in Maine, and 3) Make blight-resistant American chestnuts available to the people of Maine as soon as possible. Wahl and Dice place chestnut saplings into 5-foot-high shelters. Ultimately our gene conservation and breeding efforts are intended to produce hearty, blight-resistant populations of American chestnuts that we can use for forest restoration. We have the joyful job of finding Maine’s wild trees and harvesting their nuts!īy growing chestnuts from wild trees, the Maine Chapter is preserving genes that have helped the chestnut adapt to life at the cooler edge of its range. Their success is due primarily to Maine’s geographic isolation from the denser populations of chestnut trees south of us, where the fungus spreads more readily. Maine is currently home to more mature, flowering wild American chestnuts than any other state. We thus kept the backyard off limits while we filled in. ![]() One possible cause was that she had perhaps contracted it while hanging out in her dank hidey-hole, which she had excavated under the back porch. These suboptimal conditions made for sparser populations of chestnuts (and people) than southern climes, even before the blight. The chestnut trees recently took on new importance after our Airedale Tillie became very ill with immune-mediated hemolytic anemia (IMHA). The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) is work-ing to restore the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) to its original range. The American chestnut tree, scientifically known as Castanea dentata, is primarily found in the southern and eastern parts of the United States. As with growing anything, there are some rules of the road that will help with the successful establishment and growth of your chestnut trees. The trees were planted fourteen years ago, on a sunny but cool morning in June. We live at the northernmost end of its natural range where chestnuts, like Mainers, make due with less sunshine and more cold. Planting and growing chestnut trees is a rewarding challenge. By Andrea Lani Deep within the arboretum across the street from my office, along the edge of a field of raggedy wildflowers, sixty American chestnut trees grow in four neat rows. The Maine chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) was established in 1999 to help restore the American chestnut tree to our corner of America here in Maine.
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