Photo of the Day

No. 451

A herd of sheep graze beneath a very old American chestnut tree, c. 1900.

American Chestnut trees once constituted a quarter of the native trees found in the Appalachian Mountains.

And of the five varieties of chestnut tree, it was the American Chestnut that was the largest.

Mature trees would sometimes reach heights of one hundred feet and have diameters in excess of ten feet.

And they would live for hundreds of years.

The American Chestnut Foundation.

In the old days, people called it the ‘the perfect tree.’

Carpenters sought the American Chestnut for its wood and leather workers claimed its acidic bark was the best leather tanning agent.

Its abundant fruit was a prized edible for people.

And farmers, especially those who raised sheep and pigs, relied on the chestnuts to feed their foraging livestock.

Winslow Homer, Chestnutting, 1870.

But in 1904, a fungal disease called ‘the chestnut blight,’ believed to have come from imported Japanese chestnut trees, raced through America’s forests.

Between three and four billion American Chestnuts were killed in the tree’s former natural range.

And with this loss came the elimination of habitat for thousands of species of bugs and critters.

And the environment lost a good friend which once produced oxygen, captured and stored carbon and mitigated erosion.

While a few American Chestnuts can still be found in isolated pockets of Pennsylvania, northern Michigan and Oregon, scientists worry that, in time, these trees will also fall victim to the fungus.

Lone American Chestnut tree in late winter in Iowa. [RBreidbrown photo]

We have lost a magnificent touchstone to our past.¹

And today, most people would not recognize something so commonplace to millions of our forebearers.

The unanswered question is whether, in a world filled with turbulent despair, any of this really matters.

You be the judge.

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

Banner image: conference room at Hitler’s "Wolf's Lair" after the failed assassination attempt, July 20, 1944.

1

The Village Blacksmith, Nathaniel Currier, c. 1850.

Under a spreading chestnut-tree the village smithy stands;

His brow is wet with honest sweat, he earns whate'er he can,

Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing, onward through life he goes;

Each morning sees some task begin, each evening sees it close.

Thus at the flaming forge of life our fortunes must be wrought

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped each burning deed and thought.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1840 [edited for brevity]