In Middletown Parks, Attempts to Bring Back the American Chestnut Tree

Tony Rosati of Middletown admires the legendary 100-foot tall American Chestnut trees that once dominated forests here, until they were decimated by a devastating blight in the early 1900s. 

Now, as a volunteer with the Monmouth County Parks System, Rosati is trying to revive the American Chestnuts species in Middletown parks like Deep Cut Gardens, Thompson Park, Hartshorne Woods Park and Huber Woods. He is also sending nuts from the trees to a breeding program run by the American Chestnut Foundation, which is trying to produce a disease-resistant hybrid. 

"We've been able to plant 60 or 70 of the American Chestnut in Monmouth County, the pure kind," said Rosati, who works as an engineer by day. "We've been working with the NJ Forestry nursery in Jackson, and we put a big orchard there in the past two years of 200 trees."

At one time, one out of every four trees in the northeast was an American Chestnut, said Rosati. But once Asian varieties arrived in the United States a century ago, disease spread like wildfire killing every large American tree from Maine to Georgia -- about three billion in all. "It was kind of like when we brought smallpox over to the Indians," said Rosati. "They had no immunity." 

Nowadays, when people plant chestnut trees, they are most likely the Chinese or Japanese species, Rosati said. The effort by the American Chestnut Foundation is to produce a hybrid that incorporates traits of the American chestnut with the disease resistance of the Chinese, said Rosati.  American trees were among the largest in the eastern forests, reaching over 100 feet in height whereas the Asian species are much smaller trees. "They don't get anywhere near as massive," said Rosati. 

American Chestnuts roots that survived the blight and can attempt to sprout again from stumps, but that effort of sprouting and dying back can go on for many years, and they may never grow larger than shrub size. "Occasionally you get one of good size that flowers and produces nuts," he said. 

"Stump sprouts are common, but getting a tree of some size is what's hard," said Rosati. "The deer, there are so many of them now, are eating the stump sprouts, and eventually they die."  The parks system has added protection to certain trees to protect them. 

It takes two trees to make chestnuts, which were once important fodder for farm animals, and enjoyed by people who roasted them.

The wood of an American Chestnut is prized and hardy for furniture. County Park Planning Manager and ecologist Ken Thoman said the wood is exceptionally hard and does not rot. "I could show you some of the chestnut fenceposts in the parks that are still there in the ground, after 100 years," he said. 

Not long ago, the last American Chestnut in Holmdel Park suddenly disappeared from alongside the road leading to the tennis courts after Hurricane Irene. It was estimated to be 40 years old, 80 feet tall and 11" in diameter. Its presence was a guarded secret among park rangers and people like Rosati. 

"It's not clear what happened to it," said Rosati. Perhaps it fell during the storm and was removed, but it would seem unlikely since parks employees leave the trees in the woods because they are public property. At 40 years old, the wood was not mature enough to be valuable either, he said. 

There is one of equal size in Tindall Park, behind the Middletown Township Public Library, he said. There are also American Chestnuts sprinkled throughout Thompson Park and along the wooded paths of Huber and Hartshorne Woods. 

People who love American Chestnuts don't want to advertise where you can find them; they are so few and treasured.

Thoman said they are his favorite tree, and they are missed. "There was a whole generation that saw the trees die," he said. "Imagine losing half your trees, it must have been heartbreaking." 

Anyone interested in helping out with the American Chestnut Tree breeding program is welcome to contact Tony Rosati at ar728@comcast.net or visit http://www.acf.org.  New Jersey is covered by the Pennsylvania Chapter of the ACF, http://patacf.org/.