Rare chestnut find: 'This tree, it's a survivor'

Dan Brinkmana self-described tree nerdknew he'd hit the jackpot when he was told about a certain tree standing in acattle pasture near Mount Brydges.

To most, the tree looks like any other. But to Brinkman, a stewardship technician with the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority, he was pretty certain this was an American chestnut, a species that once thrived in southern Ontario but has been nearly wiped outby blight in the past century.

"You read in the books about how rare it is and how small most of them are, just a sprout coming off a stump, and to find a tree without a spec of blight on it, that's like going for a hike in China and seeing a panda bear cross the path in front of you. It's there, you just don't expect to see that."

It's believed that up to two million American chestnuts once grew in southern Ontario's Carolinian zone, a stretch of land that covers much of the area from Lake Huron to Lake Erie.

But blight, an insidious tree-killing fungus, has nearly doomed the species. It's believed there are only about 2,000 wild American chestnuts left in Ontario.

Mostfound are suckers sprouting up from a stump or hybrids mixed with other chestnut species.

But a fully grown chestnut tree about 70 years old and 15 metres (50 feet) tall? That's rare, withonly three reported in Middlesex County.

"This tree, it defied the odds," said Brinkman. "It's a survivor."

He contacted theCanadianChestnut Council, whose members helped himverify this was indeed an American chestnut.

Now, with the permission of the landowner, there areplans to use the tree to grow others.

Because mature American chestnuts don't produce offspring on their own, members of the council will plant blight-resistant seedlings around the tree in hopes it will lead to seed production. They will use those seeds to plant chestnuts at Longwoods Road ConservationArea over the next few years.

"It'll take some time before we get a lot of seed collection. I'd say about eight years. But if we start now we'll reap the benefit later. The more we can help the trees on the way out, we'll be able to buy time for this species."