Functionally Extinct

We had an unexpected bounty of chestnuts from the trees surrounding our new yard! American chestnut trees are functionally extinct in the wild, so we consider ourselves fortunate to have a few of the remaining large, mature trees still thriving. There’s a destructive blight that infects all American chestnuts in the wild, relentlessly killing the roots of every new sapling since the early 1900s. However, some trees that were mature before the blight arrived still manage to endure. While the blight will eventually claim these trees too, it is important to note that it will leave their ancient root systems intact, allowing them to potentially regrow in the future.