Three years ago, Tim went looking for an American chestnut listed by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Conservation on its 1991 registry of largest trees. It was supposed to be on the corner of Five Points Road and Asbury Avenue in Freehold. There was a housing development there instead.
''I investigated the fragmented remnants of forest on land marked Lot 16, adjacent to the piles of bulldozed soil, new roads, holes in the ground for foundations, and recently planted hedgerows of our state tree, the telephone pole,'' he wrote. In a couple of small groves untouched by the bulldozer, he found a few 30-foot chestnut trees with furrowed bark, apparently holding their own.
''They may have evolved to resist the blight,'' he said. ''But when I came back a year later, they were entirely obliterated. Except for one stump with some shoots.''
Still, when you're 17, you're an optimist. ''Wouldn't it be nice if people took a survey to see if any wild chestnuts were growing in their woods,'' he said. Even if they aren't blight-resistant, their nuts can be used to increase the genetic pool of this beleaguered tree.
2 comments:
Black cherry, pine, maybe honey locust . Probably not an oak or shagbark. Definitely not birch or beech.
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Three years ago, Tim went looking for an American chestnut listed by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Conservation on its 1991 registry of largest trees. It was supposed to be on the corner of Five Points Road and Asbury Avenue in Freehold. There was a housing development there instead.
''I investigated the fragmented remnants of forest on land marked Lot 16, adjacent to the piles of bulldozed soil, new roads, holes in the ground for foundations, and recently planted hedgerows of our state tree, the telephone pole,'' he wrote. In a couple of small groves untouched by the bulldozer, he found a few 30-foot chestnut trees with furrowed bark, apparently holding their own.
''They may have evolved to resist the blight,'' he said. ''But when I came back a year later, they were entirely obliterated. Except for one stump with some shoots.''
Still, when you're 17, you're an optimist. ''Wouldn't it be nice if people took a survey to see if any wild chestnuts were growing in their woods,'' he said. Even if they aren't blight-resistant, their nuts can be used to increase the genetic pool of this beleaguered tree.
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