American Chestnut Trees Are Rare, But Can Be Found In North Sea

When you to go into the woods with the Southampton Trails Preservation Society on any of their weekend hikes, the leaders offer insight on the terrain you are traveling through.

They guide you through land and its multi-layered history, what the Native Americans used plants for, and the signs of flora and fauna. Tim Corwin led a group through Elliston Park on December 4, sharing his extensive knowledge to better understand the area from his point of view.

Before the hike began, the STPS allowed me to do a quick parking lot presentation on the American chestnut and efforts to bring it back to our local forests. In North Sea, the American chestnuts never left. They have struggled through the debilitating effects of chestnut blight and look the worse for wear — and yet they persist. Optimists keep track of the old existing ones, pollinating them by hand. Scientists work on hypovirulence, which weakens chestnut blight fungus with a virus. Others hybridize the numerous species of chestnut trees from all over the world to produce a better commercial product.

The chestnut tree was considered the perfect tree. Wainscoting, cradles, coffins and violins were made from its rot-resistant wood. Wildlife and people feasted on the nuts.

Castanea dentata, the true American chestnut, covered the Appalachians at one time. Rumor has it that squirrels could travel north to south without ever touching the ground. Photos from the late 1800s commonly show trees with a 12-foot diameter at breast height. These trees in North Sea are less than a foot in diameter and look crusty and in ill health. Yet they have survived, some of them in better condition than others.

Serendipity has played a role in my chestnut exploits. This past September, I ran into Niko Nantsis from the American Chestnut Society, who was sitting on the ground in Elliston Park with a pile of chestnut burs in front of him. We had both been watching the same chestnut tree. It had numerous burs and was starting to drop them.

The American Chestnut Society has been crossing Castanea dentata with Castanea sativa, the Chinese chestnut, to try to achieve a hybrid with the blight resistance of the Chinese chestnut, but 94 percent American chestnut genetics. And while they have had extraordinary success in many ways, they have not yet achieved their goal yet.

I showed Nantsis all the local chestnut trees that I know of, some dead, some hybrids with no sign of blight that must have escaped from civilization. We collected some nuts and agreed to sprout and replant.

The trails society seemed an ideal group to include. Its members like being out in the woods and are interested in our local environment. Chance had interceded earlier this year; it led Dai Dayton and I to both be at the New York Botanical Garden this spring, and that is where I first brought up the subject of including the STPS in sprouting chestnuts and planting them.

At the beginning of our walk, we looked at the few examples that I had from the one nut-producing tree that Nantsis and I had been observing. The chestnuts were tiny in comparison to the ones that we eat, or the chestnut seed that I had bought from Route 9 Cooperative in Ohio to give to any STPS members who chose to try their hand at sprouting a few chestnuts to grow into trees.

Run by Greg Miller, the president of the Northern Nut Growers Association, Route 9 Cooperative and Empire Chestnut Company have the largest gene pool of chestnuts from all over the world. Miller has been hybridizing Turkish, Korean, Chinese, French, Japanese and Italian chestnut cultivars, as well as American chinquapin with American chestnuts for decades. I had purchased 10 pounds of the Empire Elite mix chestnut seeds and started looking for some comrades in sprouting and planting.

So I showed up to the STPS hike with a bag of chestnut seed for people to take home and sprout, letting them know of the pitfalls that I had encountered. Everyone in the STPS group enthusiastically grabbed a handful or two of the beautiful smooth brown nuts that we typically eat at this time of year. But they would hopefully plant them, not roast them. We headed off into Elliston Park together, with Corwin in the lead, to look at the trails features and discover the remaining local American chestnuts.

Heading east toward the cemetery adjacent to Elliston Park, Corwin pointed out a large burl on the base of an oak tree. The local Indians would cut those burls off and make bowls out of them. Toni Lea Corwin noted that the wood in burls is harder than the trunk wood of the tree.

At the cemetery, we paused to admire the grave plaque of Emma Rose Elliston, her story captured in bronze for all to read. Tim Corwin explained that she was born on a whaling ship off of Oahu. When she died, her husband, who is buried right next to her, honored her desire to preserve the family land and gave it to the town.

Off we went back into the woods to explore some more and come to understand how the trails society keeps the paths in good condition for all of us to venture through the Elliston legacy. Elliston Park is contiguous with Wolf Swamp, the Peconic Land Trust holdings, and the Nature Conservancy’s big woods overlooking the marshes of Scallop Pond.

In order to cross the alewife drain that leads out to North Sea Harbor, we had to traverse a small bridge. It had been in disrepair, beyond rickety really, rotting actually. Corwin insisted that the town repair it, pestering them with phone calls and offers to do it himself. It is now a sturdy crossing as it has just been rebuilt.

Further along, a pine on the high point overlooking Big Fresh Pond had split in the recent wind storms. Corwin had brought his chainsaw out to cut the fallen half obstructing the path. The pine had a 12-inch-plus diameter and was high enough to keep you from going under or over. There was some discussion as to whether a smaller tree needed to be cut so that hikers did not slide down the hill toward the lake. He explained leaving the roots in was important, so as not to create more erosion on the slope.

As we rounded the cove and headed up the slope, our group arrived at a point in the trail that I had referred to in the parking lot before we started. There was a small grove of true American chestnuts on the rise above the cove. They had all been hit by chestnut blight, Cryphonectria parasitica, the fungus that causes cankers in the bark and cuts off the tree’s circulatory system by killing off the cambium layer. In the 1890s, this introduced disease began to wipe out the American chestnut trees, which ranged from Maine to Louisiana.

Further along we saw more dead chestnuts. It felt like a depressing note among all the more positive observations made by Corwin. He had recently cut down a large old dead chestnut that was right on the side of the trail. Although chestnut is a rot-resistant species, strong winds could create a falling branch hazard for people using the trail. This particular chestnut had survived several bouts of blight. The rings showed that it had been affected by the fungus many times over its life and survived the attack. Corwin noted that it would take a long time for the tree to rot, and everyone got a close-up look at the gnarly, encrusted, broken-up bark that had been the site of the blight infections.

Eventually we came across the one American chestnut tree that had produced viable seed this year, under which I had met Nantsis. Many burs had hung from the branches earlier in the fall, but not all had been pollinated, so many of the seeds were undeveloped. I let Nantsis know that I had only one viable nut to sprout.

“One is better than none” he replied optimistically.