Interest is sprouting

Practically anywhere you look and see a flat place in the Appalachians, there used to be a mountain there.
The old Blue Ridge used to be a lot taller than they are now — age has stooped the mountains over time, worn them down and washed them away.
Man has stepped in to speed up the process, sending up bulldozers to the top of the hills to send aggregate spilling down the slopes with each processed and scooped for coal or other minerals.
Southwestern Virginia has its share of the pushing-down-a-mountain-type mining. Most of the earth moving that's done around the Twin Counties is to get at the rock itself.
The severe appearance of the cut and bare face of such a mountain comes as quite a visual shock, especially as it usually remains surrounded by lush and verdant hills.
But there's an intriguing idea out there that's seemingly gaining acceptance by scientists and foresters and miners alike, to not only reclaim the mined-out land but to quickly restart whole forests of the East's blighted chestnut tree.
In July, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne planted a blight-resistant American chestnut tree in the nation’s capital to celebrate 30 years of reclaiming mine lands since the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977.
"The industry has successfully reclaimed more than 2.2 million acres of mined lands,” the otherwise obscure and very low profile Kempthorne said in a news release. “At many mines, the reclamation work has far exceeded all state and federal regulations."
Efforts now include planting both pure and hybrid chestnut trees to reforest stripped areas, as this will provide a great opportunity to repopulate the species that the blight nearly wiped out.
“At breeding orchards in Virginia and at Penn State University, the American Chestnut Foundation’s scientists have taken Chinese chestnut trees, which are resistant to the blight, and bred them with their American cousins over several generations,” said Marshal T. Case, President and CEO of the foundation. “The most recent generations of hybrids have nearly 95 percent of the American chestnut’s genes, combined with the blight resistance of the Chinese chestnut. After 25 years of effort, we are producing seeds and seedlings to replant across the American landscape.”
The sturdy and straight growing chestnut would also supply ample benefits for these local economies, with community-boosting profits from future timbering and credits for carbon sequestration in the trees.
The blight killed 3.5 billion chestnut trees, which once accounted a quarter of all trees on the East Coast and in the Ohio Valley.
The American chestnut tree grew to heights of 100 feet with a five-foot diameter, the news release said. The chestnut also had the advantages of straight grain, light weight and natural resistance to decay and insects, once making it a favorite for construction and furniture making from America’s colonial days. 
“In planting this tree, we are planting the hope and making a commitment that this noble hardwood will be restored to the American landscape and its vital ecological role in our nation’s forests,” Kempthorne said. “With our partners from the American Chestnut Foundation and the mining industry, we are working to help return this natural icon to Appalachia by planting it on reclaimed surface mine lands.”
“The coal fields of Appalachia match up almost perfectly with what once was the natural range of the American chestnut,” Kempthorne explained. “And we have discovered that chestnuts grow twice as fast on the loosely packed soils commonly found on reclamation sites.” 
Because reclaimed mine sites in Appalachia are surrounded by forests, wildlife will spread the American chestnut seeds from reclaimed areas to neighboring forests, allowing nature to repopulate the mountains with the American chestnut, the news release said.

• Originally published September 2007

An old chestnut

Sometimes it seems like we might have to change the old saying to "you can't see the forest for the disease."
Trees still spread their branches over a large portion of the Twin Counties, but many face a growing number of health-related issues — issues that could considerably impact the economy and the beauty of the region.
The news isn't all bad, however.
Gypsy months continue their swarm of destruction, flying into parts of Carroll County. Gypsy moth caterpillars are said to cause $22 million in damage to trees a year by slowly and inexorably chomping down on the leaves of deciduous hardwoods at night until they're stripped down.
Female moths get too fat to fly and they wait for the males to find them, reproduce and die.
Many scientists, including those at Virginia Tech, are working to slow the spread of the moths to only 6,000 square miles by confusing the males with fake pheromones
The Twin Counties have seen its stout hemlock trees ravaged by the woolly adelgid, a leaf bore.
Whole swaths of forests in the Twin Counties have been turned from healthy green to dull brown as the hemlocks, said to be one of the better trees for use in log cabin construction, get attacked.
Virginia appears to be bearing the brunt of the woolly adelgid invasion on the East Coast, with more counties affected than any other state.
The dogwood — both Virginia's state tree and flower — faces a raft of challenges from fungi, especially anthracnose, which continues to spread along the Appalachian Mountain chain through West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina.
Even the might oaks can be felled. The Daily Press of Hampton Roads recently reported that forestry personnel were baffled by widespread deaths among oak stands in eastern Virginia.
Trees died, dried up, apparently overnight, landowners reported to foresters. Others lived.
Researchers had no concrete conclusions about the causes behind these deaths, but could only conjecture that they resulted from stress related to weather over the long term.
Virginia Department of Forestry officials told the newspaper that first the drought, followed by heavy rains associated with Hurricane Isabel and then this year's heatwave were too much for the trees in the end.
Water rotted the roots in the ground and eventually killed many trees.
People out West have to worry about Sudden Oak Death. Scientists believe a fungus-like organism related to the one that caused the Irish potato famine has led to significant die offs in coastal California.
Foresters and others in Virginia and other parts of the country are on high alert to keep this disease from spreading to our area.
Tree diseases left a big scar on the forests of the Twin Counties when a blight decimated the American Chestnut tree.
The stout chestnut covered the mountains, with its white blooms making the Appalachians look snow-capped, according to the American Chestnut Foundation.
A good tree for lumber, the tree was used for telegraph poles, railroad ties, shingles, paneling, fine furniture, musical instruments, even pulp and plywood, and the nuts added to the mountain economy as a cash crop besides.
The foundation set out to make sure the American chestnut flourishes again by genetically crossing it with the disease-resistant Chinese variety.
A research farm is located in Meadowview, but work to revive the chestnuts also takes place in the Twin Counties.
Chestnut trees grow in the Matthews State Forest and on private land around here.
Researchers report success in developing healthy trees that resemble the American chestnut of old. They believe a highly disease resistant variety will be available within five years, but the full breeding project could take as much as 50 more years.
People can help with the research and the restoration of chestnuts by becoming members of the foundation.
For more information, visit the foundation's Web site at http://www.acf.org/.
The health of trees is a quality of life issue for the Twin Counties' residents. We can't afford to lose our trees to another plague.

* Originally published in August 2005.