Plant · P-544

American Chestnut

Castanea dentata

American chestnut once carried the sweetest nut of any chestnut species and covered more than 200 million acres of eastern forest, but an introduced Asian blight fungus has made mature trees functionally extinct across that range: the root system survives and keeps sending up sprouts, but the sprouts are reinfected and die back before they ever bear a crop. Anyone growing it today needs blight-resistant backcross stock bred from repeated crosses with Chinese chestnut, since pure American seedlings normally die before fruiting. Its huge, fragrant flower display hosts more butterfly and moth species than almost any other tree in its genus.