Woods Wise Wire
The Natural Resources
Conservation Service (NRCS) is holding a round of local working group meetings
in the next few weeks. Local working groups assist the NRCS in matters relating
to the implementation and technical aspects of conservation programs under Title
II of the Agricultural Act of 2014 (the 2014 Farm Bill). This includes the
Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which can assist woodland
owners with certain practices on their forest land. These meetings are an
opportunity to discuss program delivery priorities. Meetings are open to the
public. Persons with disabilities who require accommodations to attend or
participate in any of these meetings should contact the person noted by no
later than one week prior to the meeting.
For a list of upcoming Local Work Group Meeting dates, click here.
You can also find out more about
local working groups by reading “What is the USDA
Local Working Group? (.pdf) “
 RUSS
DILLINGHAM/SUN JOURNAL
State forester Shane
Duigan measures the circumference of an American chestnut tree in Lovell on
Wednesday afternoo
Monica Jerkins, Staff Writer, Sun Jorunal
Wednesday, December 2, 2015 at
8:44 pm
LOVELL — It’s official, for
now — North America’s tallest known American chestnut tree is growing in a
protected forest in Lovell.
Officials from The American
Chestnut Foundation came all the way from Asheville, N.C., to be present for
the official measuring ceremony in a media event on Wednesday. They found the
tree to be 115 feet high, at least 20 feet higher than the closest known counterpart
east of the Mississippi, which happens to be in Hebron and stands 95 feet tall.
While the height of the Lovell
chestnut tree is impressive and will earn the tree a place in the Big Tree
registry, it falls short of being named the largest chestnut tree in the
country, state or even the county. The honor of being named one of the largest
trees in the Big Tree Program's categories for those geographical regions goes
to trees that earn enough points based on a formula that figures in
circumference, crown and height — and the Lovell chestnut tree does not fill
all three of those requirements.
Though the Lovell chestnut is
tall, it is relatively thin, with a circumference of 4 feet, 1.3 inches. The
tree grows in a stand of tall pines on property bequeathed to the University of
Maine Foundation from the Volk family, which owned the land for more than 100
years. The tall pines, which provide support and are probably part of the
reason the lone chestnut has been able to grow to such heights, also are likely
the reason the chestnut has remained so thin over the past century.
It’s impossible to accurately
date the chestnut without a wood-boring test, but such a test would only create
an entry point for blight and disease to enter the tree, so officials said they
would refrain from taking such a sample.
Local landowner and executive
director of the Greater Lovell Land Trust Tom Henderson was able to provide
some insight as to the approximate age of the chestnut tree.
“This was all farm until
1898," Henderson said. "Every one of these pine trees is less than
that old. So, it’s clearly got to be almost as old as the pines to keep up with
the height, but these pines can’t be more than 120 years old.”
Around 1900, when the Lovell tree
was likely barely more than a sapling, there were 4 billion American chestnut
trees in the Appalachian Mountain states from Maine to Alabama. One in four
trees in the Appalachians was an American chestnut. In the early 1900s, a
chestnut blight came to America, likely on Japanese or Chinese chestnuts that
were resistant to the fungus they carried. It was devastating to the American
chestnut population, however, and nearly led to the tree’s extinction in North
America.
So, the finding of this
particular tree, one that is tall and healthy and has managed to live through
the blight infestation all these years, is much more significant than the tree
being the tallest in the land.
“It’s such a positive story,
finding something we thought was lost forever,” said Lisa Thomson, president
and CEO of The American Chestnut Foundation.
Brian Roth, who works for the
University of Maine in its Cooperative Forestry Research Unit, spotted the tree
from the air while he and a graduate student were searching for chestnut trees
by plane. They flew over stands of trees in areas that had the right soil and
climate conditions to support chestnuts.
Roth said finding the tree from
the air took planning and timing.
“In July, when nothing else is
blooming, this tree will have a large amount of white flowers in its crown,"
Roth said. "The old-timers talk about the hillside in the Appalachian
Mountains being covered in flowers as if it was snow. And so we were able to
key in on the particular week when these were blooming and flew around looking
at these areas where we’d expect to find them, and we did find this tree."
He added, "We made a mark on
the GPS when we were flying over. After that, back to the lab, find out who the
landowner is, and get permission to come on the property and take a look and
see if it is actually a chestnut that we were hoping to find.”
In 1983, The American Chestnut
Foundation organized in an attempt to restore American chestnuts to the
landscape. The trees provide edible chestnuts, a superfood, and are considered
an excellent source of nutrition for a variety of wildlife, according to a news
release from the foundation.
Chestnut wood is straight and
rot-resistant, and because the trees grow quickly, they store large amounts of
carbon, which helps to mitigate the effects of global warming. The foundation
is conducting research to create blight-resistant trees and reintroduce them
into the forests, and to provide a road map of sorts for the same type of
restoration efforts for other tree species that have suffered similar fates,
such as the American elm, according to the release.
mjerkins@sunmediagroup.net
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