Georgia Wildlife Federation

Resources < Wildlife Habitats < Guide to Native Plants of Georgia for Wildlife < Castanea dentata

In the modern ecological and cultural sense, the term “invasive species” has come to be largely associated with exotic plants and animals, many of which have negative impacts upon the environment. However, few people note that tiny, microscopic organisms like fungi or bacteria may also be not only exotic, but invasive. The destruction capacity of exotics is best encapsulated in the story of the American Chestnut.

The American Chestnut is a magnificent tree that for most of eastern North American history was an extremely important forest species. Its deeply fissured bark grows upward in the shape of a massive corkscrew unlike any other forest tree. Like beeches and oaks, it grows slowly but attains a hulking size that dominates the upper canopy over many decades. Its substantial nuts were born in profusion and once fed Native American people, American pioneers and settlers, bears, squirrels, and important game birds like the wild turkey and even the now-extinct passenger pigeon.

Its timber was also economically important. Chestnut wood is hard, durable, rot-resistant, and grows faster than oak wood. Its grain enabled it to be easily split or sawn, and the log cabins of early American pioneers were often built from it. It made excellent furniture, split-rail fences, shingles, construction timber, flooring, posts, plywood, paper pulp, and even telephone poles. Chestnut wood also had a high tannin content that made it just as useful for tanning leather as oak wood is now.

All of that, however, quickly ended with the introduction of a deadly bark fungus from Asia called the Chestnut Blight. Beginning shortly before 1904 and lasting for the next two to three decades, virtually every American Chestnut was girdled and killed by the disease. Sadly, upon realizing that every tree was at risk, loggers panicked. They clear-cut many stands of healthy trees and may have unknowingly destroyed some with genes for resistance to the blight. To the modern day, eastern North American hardwood forests have suffered a tremendous blow.

The Chestnut was a traditional cultural symbol. Songs like “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” have lost a great deal of meaning to the several American generations that have never seen a single tree. Chestnuts were formerly sold on street corners in small towns across America. Many people could even harvest crops of their own from trees in their yards or neighborhoods.

Breeders across North America are working determinedly to bring the Chestnut back from the dead by breeding resistant varieties. Some trees managed to survive the fungus, and are now of extreme importance in the survival of the species. If encountering a specimen of American Chestnut in the wild, refrain from wild collection at any cost. Allowing the tree to survive is the highest service one can provide to North America’s ecology.

Family: Fagaceae (Beech)

Description: Tall, fast-growing deciduous hardwood tree. Bark is dark gray to brown, with fissures that spiral around the trunk like a helix or corkscrew. Leaves are oblong-lanceolate, 10” long and 3-4” wide, and have a sharply serrated margin. Flowers are catkins with both male and female flowers, 8” long, and appearing in early summer. The fruit is a spiny green husk that ripens to yellow, 2.5” in diameter. Three teardrop-shaped nuts are inside each capsule, and burst from the husks near the first fall frost.

Size: 100 feet tall and 30-40 feet wide

Habit: Tall, fast-growing deciduous hardwood tree with a broadly columnar crown

Light: Full sun to partial shade

Planting and Care: Purchase trees from nurseries that state, with concrete supporting evidence, that they do not wild-collect their specimens but instead propagate their own material. Plant in loose, rich soil such as that found in mature hardwood forests. Mulch juvenile trees in open locations and amend the soil with plenty of composted leaf matter. Water weekly the first year of establishment.

Ornamental Value: Unfortunately, the ornamental quality of this magnificent tree was greatly compromised by the blight. However, young trees survive for several years before becoming infected, and often sprout from the roots after the main trunk is killed. They seldom live long enough to produce a nut crop.

Landscape Use: The American Chestnut was once useful as a shade tree, provided it was not planted where its spiny husks were not wanted underfoot. It also was important for its nut crop, and was often planted in yards and parks. Now, trees work best as small, short-lived specimens to be appreciated for the ecological struggle they have undergone and survived.

Wildlife Benefits: The American Chestnut was a very important tree for wildlife. Its abundant and dependable nut crop fed deer, turkeys, bears, rodents, and the extinct passenger pigeon during the winter. It is a foliar host for the Orange-Tipped Oakworm Moth.

Native Habitat: Formerly native to North America, east of the Mississippi from Florida north to Quebec. Small, fragmented populations still exist. It prefers mature hardwood forests.

Propagation: Purchase trees from nurseries that state, with concrete supporting evidence, that they do not wild-collect their specimens but instead propagate their own material.