In the early 20th century, a blight fungus wiped out most of the 4 billion American chestnut trees on the eastern seaboard. The loss was ecologically devastating. Short Wave host Emily Kwong dives deep into how scientists are trying to resurrect the American chestnut tree — and recent controversy over a plan to plant genetically modified chestnuts in the wild. Want to hear about more efforts to recover endangered or lost species? Let us know by emailing [email protected]!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Full Episode
Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here with an episode from our holiday archives all about chestnut trees. Stick around until the end of the episode for an update on the latest science, too. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
Hey, everybody. Maddie Safaya here with shortwave reporter Emily Kwong. Hey, Maddie. Hey, Kwong. You've been delving into the mystery of what happened to one of the most significant trees in the United States, the American chestnut.
Yes. The Kwong family is very into chestnuts. Every Christmas season, we'd buy them roasted on the streets of New York. My dad folds them into his stuffing. And of course, you honestly can't go anywhere this time of year without hearing Nat King Cole sing about them. You know what I'm talking about.
I do.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. It just sets the mood. Right. You know what time it is. But Maddie, it took years of eating chestnuts, listening to this song to ask myself, why haven't I ever seen a chestnut tree in the United States? Have you ever wondered that? Every day, Kwong. No, really. Have you ever wondered that? No, I haven't.
It's odd because by 1945, when that Christmas song was written, most of the four billion chestnut trees on the eastern seaboard had died. The chestnuts you buy these days, the ones I eat, are all imported from Europe and Asia. And if you ask people from Appalachia, where the chestnut was an important species for the ecosystem and the economy, this tree represented a way of life that was lost.
Rex Mann of Kentucky says his father never got over it.
He never became reconciled to that loss. He was always hopeful that something would happen, you know, that the tree would come back.
Now, Rex is one of the many people working to bring a version of the American chestnut tree back and tapping into the very genetics of the tree to do it.
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