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A couple more things about American Chestnuts:
-Chestnut forests used to cover a shitton of the northeast before being reduced to basically nothing
-"Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire" is about the tradition of eating American Chestnuts in the winter...
-... Because for some, it was a treat. And for others, it was practically a staple food! They were an extremely abundant resource
-Seriously, look at the size of the original American Chestnut forest:
collapsed inline media
Farmers used to just let their critters loose into the forests to eat the chestnuts off the forest floor because there were just so many. Now I think every American chestnut tree alive has a name.
If I could time travel, I'd go see the chestnut forests first. I only learned about them a few years ago but I think about it a weird amount (maybe because I have a huge elm tree in my yard)
Like can you imagine entire states covered in them? I don't think they were quite the size of redwoods but they were ancient and well-established forests. And it makes me sad that most people don't even know what we lost because some rich asshole just HAD to have foreign trees on their estates.
Christ, it’s ALWAYS the fucking rich assholes!
Blight would have happened at some point. Global travel made it inevitable.
This made me immediately sad
This is one thing that I really hope GMOs allow us to counter. We need chestnut trees back. Natural and farmed ones. Perhaps we will find a gene for blight resistance someday.
What is growing there now? It sounds like a pretty shitty situation.
The surviving forests are often oak, hickory, ash, pine. A different blight is working its way through the Eastern Hemlock, which are truly the giant sequoias of the East. Humongous old trees.
Also, corn, wheat, rice, tobacco, towns, cities, suburbs. Probably a third of the US population lives in that green area, to include Washington DC, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Altoona, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Memphis, Charlotte, Asheville, Atlanta...looks like it misses Colombia and just barely grazes Raleigh.
Stumps and other trees. And of course, a ton it was leveled for housing/infrastructure/etc
Captainaggravated had some great info a few comments down about the remains of the forest if you want to know more!