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boston_acc t1_isykp9w wrote

Reply to comment by Rabl in Chestnut picking? by envyu27

One of the saddest stories out there. The trees used to number in the billions in North America.

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labyrinthian1 t1_it0117y wrote

Check out the American Chestnut Foundation! Scientists found a gene that gives chestnuts resistance to the blight. They're working on getting federal approval to pollinate wild chestnut trees with pollen from their engineered chestnuts and bring back the chestnut groves!

You can read about it here, it's a super cool story.

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boston_acc t1_it04329 wrote

That’s fantastic. Another encouraging story was an adult chestnut found in a random stand of trees in Delaware. Quite wide bark, too. Hopefully in the next 40-50 years we have our beautiful trees back. It’s the least we can do, given it was humans’ global movement that brought the pathogen here.

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