The seed orchards near Triadelphi Reservoir are planted with the fifth-generation progeny with a blight-resistant and non-native Chinese chestnut. The goal for the group is to harvest nuts by the ...

The American chestnut tree, nearly wiped out by a blight that started more than 100 years ago, is beginning to make a comeback thanks to its Chinese cousin.

Every American chestnut tree from Alabama to Maine will eventually succumb to blight.“It’s just a matter of when,” said Larry Grossman, ... Volunteers plant 4,000 chestnut seeds to… ...

Then, pointing to the right, “This tree is the result of an initial cross between a Chinese tree and an American chestnut. And that’s the first step in the American Chestnut Foundation program.

Stephen Zuk tills the soil to prepare for chestnut tree planting on his property in Cressona, Friday, June 20, 2025. The planting is part of an effort to develop a hybrid, crossbred with a Chinese ...

The two recent studies found that leaf litter from transgenic trees has no harmful effects on germinating seeds, mycorrhizal fungi that benefit the tree and the ecosystem, or larval frogs that live in ...

These trees are 15/16ths “American” in character. The key difference is that the resistance to the blight has been bred into them from the Chinese chestnut. Those few trees (20) remaining will ...

On a recent fall day in Weston, John Emery, the local chapter director for the American Chestnut Foundation, points to a gangly, thin chestnut tree just about 2 feet tall with a section of scraped ...

Poured from sacks into a machine, these seeds — future Chinese chestnut and white oak trees, many collected from donors around the state — were filtered into tubes that cast them on a row of ...

And unlike the crossbred trees, the genetically engineered ones preserve nearly all of the native chestnut’s genome. “To me, this is really the answer,” he said.

CRESSONA — Seeds lying deep inside a sleepy hillside orchard could play a crucial role in the regeneration of the embattled American chestnut tree. Early Friday morning, a team of volunteers ...