Hey Steve! Love what you are doing!! I am fascinated with the pure American chestnut tree! I think I have a few pure one's,on my property. I would love to get with you
Great video. This gives me hope I can have some success growing them in my yard next spring. I’ve got about a dozen pure American chestnuts in cold stratification right now. I was lucky to find quite a few flowering trees this past summer that ended up having fertile burs. Biggest tree I found was 14” DBH in a chestnut oak forest that was killed by gypsy moths.
Wow, lots and lots of information here. Thanks for sharing. I tried and planted some years ago American chestnut on one of my farms, but I didn’t take very good care of them. I’m in southeast Michigan. I don’t think they ever naturally made it up this far north.
I Don't blame you for not getting involved with any of those organizations, they have a way of being NUTS themselves. Hope your trees produce and grow for 400 yrs. I'd love to see a mountain ridge in June turn white with blossoms in my lifetime but I doubt it ,im 61 SOOOO..
Would like purchased about 200 seeds from your orchard...I am growing about 100 Dunstan from seeds now here in eastern Oklahoma....I always put seeds in the frig to stratify...for planting in March...
Hi Steve, can I ask you a question? I have some property with Fruit trees, oaks, dunstan chestnuts etc. Someone I met is going to give me some real original American Chestnut tree seedlings. They are susceptible to blight. My question is by planting them with the other trees I have will it put my other trees at risk? My concern is if the fungus is able to propagate in the American Chestnut tree it would easily spread to other trees.
If you are in the east and have oaks nearby, the blight is already in your area. If your Dunstan seedlings are resistant, it wont matter if the blight blows onto them from an American Chestnut or an Oak.
Not a biologist ,but I often thought that our Fungus like the Morel Mushroom or one like this world be able to kill off this blight. Could it be the reason the root systems of the Chestnut stumps live on so long and keep sprouting saplings. Just a thought 🤔 🤷♂️
Hi Steve. I am working on a land deal to buy 75 acres of Missouri Ozark scrub land. My goal is to make a cabin and grow blight resistant chestnuts. Do you believe you will have chestuts or seedlings for sale?
Not as nice as the American chestnut but Chinese chestnuts are immune. We have some on a family farm ( relatives bought it) that my grandfather planted.
He has always quickly responded to emails I have sent over the years and will mail chestnuts if you send him a check. I just received some nuts from him a week and a half ago.
There are, I believe 2 colleges with breeding programs, using a genetic mutation with genes from (wheat germ?) that causes a natural blight resistance. They are in the process of obtaining government permits to release/plant these trees into the native environment. It's really to bad that the logging industry didn't leave these trees growing in the wild so that they could have developed their own resistant strains. Unfortunately, it became a race between the two! I have about 200 Dunstan Chestnuts that I'm going to attempt to germinate in the spring. Although not purely American genetics, it's a way to get chestnuts in my location.
Most surviving wild trees survive as roots (which are resistant) and they’ll grow up a season or two and then get killed back. So they almost never get the chance to produce any fruit. There are pure American chestnuts growing in Washington and Oregon; they are from seeds brought before the blight hit.
The logging industry did not kill off the American chestnut it was imported into NY by they botanical society it came in on an imported Chinese chestnut and spread like wild fire and killed most of the native trees
@@williamfelts7530 ..... I understand that it was a disease that did the damage. But, once the disease spread, the race was on to log off as many of the trees as possible. Had this not taken place, surely there would have been a larger % that could have shown a stronger natural resistance. Rarely does a virus or disease kill off 100% of anything. If it did, that would render the virus or disease obsolete, too.
Great informative video but they seem to be all hibrids.Leaves are not with large dents like the american chestnuts( castanea dentata). How are they doing now? They are valuable trees and the chestnuts look 100% american. They have little asian genes or from the warmer weather specie of american chestnut ( the Chinquapin). Would make sence since you said you lost trees due to cold. EDIT,the most sensitive ones that you call high elevation are real american chestnuts ( castanea dentata). Low elevation ones are another specie ( chinquapin)thats slightly more resistant to blight .So you get hybrids from the seeds if you plant them.American chestnuts but 2 different species.
Have you grown, or even seen in person, either species? Chinquapins have much smaller and much more glossy leaves, don't favor a central leader and produce their nuts in clusters of burrs with single nuts in each burr. The cold snap that he mentioned was the polar vortex that hit Kentucky and has no bearing on anything you have said.
@@danielsmith336 Im trying to grow the cold elevation american chestnuts,pure not GMO or hybrids.I have just one that germinated. Never seen in person these trees but ive read a lot about them. I also have 5 pawpaws like in your picture( one is Susquehanna) and 3 american persimmon seedlings,in Europe,Romania.
@@mihaiilie8808 I'm lucky in that I am within the natural range of all three species that you grow and in a state that has people who value all three. There is an American Chestnut Foundation orchard where I have been able to see the blight, pure Americans, hybrid Americans and pure Chinese for several years as well as a University planting with (struggling, almost dead from blight) pure American chestnuts, Chinquapins and various hybrids that I have visited on occasion. I know that there were pure American trees planted in Europe as novelties before the blight but I don't know what areas you could find them in. Why aren't you working with the European or European X Japanese hybrids? Most of us in the United States who are interested in the American chestnut are interested because they were native and haven't completely vanished yet. For you there should be locally adapted European chestnuts and readily available named cultivars. My picture is a nice sized wild cluster that I took a picture of to show a friend. The majority of the other wild trees around it produced smaller fruits but none of them were as good as a named variety. 'Susquehanna' is one of the very best, in my opinion so are 'Wells' and 'IXL' It also produces good offspring, some of the KSU cultivars are Peterson cultivar seedlings. Be sure to plant your 'Susquehanna' seeds, you might find the next best cultivar. I grow 'Taytwo' 'NC-1' 'IXL' 'Prolific' 'Mango' 'KSU Atwood' 'KSU Benson' 'Wells' 'PA Golden' 'Susquehanna' and 'Sunflower' This year was the first year that most of my trees produced, so I didn't have to go out foraging. With your persimmons there is a 50% chance that you will have males and then not all females will taste good. Also within the American persimmon population there are two groups that are the same species but set fruit a little differently. If your seeds came from northern persimmons, females will produce seedless fruit without a male. If they came from southern persimmons, they will need pollination or else the fruit will not form. The line for that is arbitrarily the Ohio river, but I live a little south of it and some of the local trees set fruit without seeds (and thus were not pollinated). This has nothing to do with the actual location that they grow, it has to do with chromosome count. Most named cultivars were selected from the 90 chromosome population found north of the Ohio river. Good luck with your seedlings and trees
@@danielsmith336 We have a lot of american native trees in east europe. Black locust for instance its native american but we have huge forests of it planted everywhere and we make black locust honney. It ields a ton of nectar per hectare wich its unbelievable and also high quality, transparent ,almost like water honney.Also the wood its of the highest quality . Europes best honney called acacia honney ,its actually black locust honney,american native tree. About persimmons ,i have 3 female seedlings but ive also planted a japanese kaki right next to them to help pollination. I found a way to tell apart american persimmon seedlings from male to female,males grow much faster usually and females verry slow.Not always the case but most of the time.In Ukraine they made american persimmon hibrids with the japanese kaki. I also want the little fruit ,black persimmon Diospyros Texana and in the future il grow that too. About pawpaws,its hard to get anything in Europe apart from Sunflower and Prima but i got a Susquehanna wich flowered first time last year. I have Susquehanna,Prima and Sunflower and 2 sunflower seedlings( not grafted like the first). Altough Prima is self fertile like Sunflower,Susquehanna its my most prized tree and i will plant the seeds. The american chestnut seeds i got from a russian friend and he got them from The American Chestnut foundation. We dont like to eat chestnuts much in east europe and i plant the American chestnut because its an endangered tree,fast growing ,and i collect endangered trees and fast growing trees as a hobby( im a licensed enviromentalist and from there the passion but not anything comercial). I grow rosewoods bonsai( dalbergia species ) ,cold hardy mahogany Toona Sinensis- fast growing for an example. For comercial purposes ive planted 300 almonds and will be grafting 70% with Marcona and experimentally ive planted 150 iranian pistachios outdoor in USDA zone 6-7 . Before the almonds orchard i collected cold hardy pecan seeds from all over the world and i grew about 80 trees.Then i moved them into somme large experimental root prunning pots and they all died because of the drought . So initially i wanted to plant pecans and a few hickories( shellbark and shagbark tiny nuts or with thick shell but i like them as much as walnuts) instead of almonds. I tryed to plant the white walnut,J Cinerea wich i think its the best tasting in the world and also the healthyest ,due to the cold enviroment it lives.Wanted to cross the white walnut with a Carpathian walnut that has giant nuts the size of a turkey egg ,but the shell doesnt seal to well and they get mold. Had an idea to make a giant walnut hibrid with core that gets out in one piece easy like the white walnut. I also have a greenhouse where i grow lemons,Annona Cherimoya and otther tropical fruit trees.
The blight affects the trunk and eventually girdles it, not allowing the nutrients and water to flow up. As long as the tree is alive and mature it will produce nuts .
@varun009 The bark protects the tree, as the tree grows the bark begins to split naturally. Any opening to the Circulatory system of the tree will allow an entrance for the fungus.
Let me go check my stipules...... Some have them parallel and some have none. Some have fuzz others none. Genetics is a funny thing as my original two trees have an unknown provenance but I have considered them hybrids.
Steve, thanks for all of that information. It would be really great to see a new video about your chestnut orchard and how it’s doing!
Hey Steve!
Love what you are doing!!
I am fascinated with the pure American chestnut tree!
I think I have a few pure one's,on my property.
I would love to get with you
Thanks for what you are doing, I love them 😍 they are delicious 😋and nutritious too 🙏🤲😇❤️🇺🇸
Great video. This gives me hope I can have some success growing them in my yard next spring. I’ve got about a dozen pure American chestnuts in cold stratification right now. I was lucky to find quite a few flowering trees this past summer that ended up having fertile burs. Biggest tree I found was 14” DBH in a chestnut oak forest that was killed by gypsy moths.
Well done Steve from Ireland, I started to grow some Spanish Chessnut Trees from Seed, I love the look of the tree and especially the leaves .
This man is a hero love what you are doing sir hope you succeed.
Great to see this beautiful tree.❤
Bless your heart these trees were revered by my papaw he's long gone now but talked about them always
I have a special place in my heart for promiscuous trees!
Wow, lots and lots of information here. Thanks for sharing. I tried and planted some years ago American chestnut on one of my farms, but I didn’t take very good care of them. I’m in southeast Michigan. I don’t think they ever naturally made it up this far north.
Love hazelnuts too ❤
this made me happy
I would love to purchase some of your seeds or seedlings to help support your breeding program, as I’m sure many others would.
Thank you so much for the video and your courage to grow the American chestnut. Would you sell some chestnut seed I will propagate them.
If you're interested in slowing down or stopping the blight, I've read that you should put mud surrounding the areas.
What works better is blending up some neem leaves with a bit of water and brushing it on to the affected areas.
Great video, a lot of information that I've never heard anywhere else.
awesome! Can't wait to purchase some seeds in the fall
Just received two American Chestnut Trees i'm planting today.
These trees are our history need brought back
Good info!
Could you do an update video?
I Don't blame you for not getting involved with any of those organizations, they have a way of being NUTS themselves. Hope your trees produce and grow for 400 yrs. I'd love to see a mountain ridge in June turn white with blossoms in my lifetime but I doubt it ,im 61 SOOOO..
4 billion trees died from 1902 to about 1955
Would like purchased about 200 seeds from your orchard...I am growing about 100 Dunstan from seeds now here in eastern Oklahoma....I always put seeds in the frig to stratify...for planting in March...
Is The American Chestnut fruit looks somewhat like acorn nuts? The leaves are pointy and spiky . We got 4 trees and just started to fruit a few.
How do you know for certain that these are wild-type American chestnuts and not a hybrid cultivar?
Its easy because the American chestnits are verry small,verry ,,furry,, ,leaves are verrry long.
Do you sell American Chestnuts seeds. Down here in Galveston county TX. I would like to try growing them here.
Hi Steve, can I ask you a question? I have some property with Fruit trees, oaks, dunstan chestnuts etc.
Someone I met is going to give me some real original American Chestnut tree seedlings. They are susceptible to blight.
My question is by planting them with the other trees I have will it put my other trees at risk? My concern is if the fungus is able to propagate in the American Chestnut tree it would easily spread to other trees.
If you are in the east and have oaks nearby, the blight is already in your area. If your Dunstan seedlings are resistant, it wont matter if the blight blows onto them from an American Chestnut or an Oak.
I love your accent, you sound like the men i new at JPL
How do I get some American Chestnuts from Mater Maker?
Not a biologist ,but I often thought that our Fungus like the Morel Mushroom or one like this world be able to kill off this blight. Could it be the reason the root systems of the Chestnut stumps live on so long and keep sprouting saplings. Just a thought 🤔 🤷♂️
Any updates? Are you selling seedlings still or can I purchase the nuts to plant and grow?
Hi Steve. I am working on a land deal to buy 75 acres of Missouri Ozark scrub land. My goal is to make a cabin and grow blight resistant chestnuts. Do you believe you will have chestuts or seedlings for sale?
Same here 30 acres in the missouri ozark maybe we should work together
I'm in no too. Wanting to grow them also
Not as nice as the American chestnut but Chinese chestnuts are immune. We have some on a family farm ( relatives bought it) that my grandfather planted.
Drafting
Has there been any updates since this was made?
He has always quickly responded to emails I have sent over the years and will mail chestnuts if you send him a check. I just received some nuts from him a week and a half ago.
I want to buy both varieties, do you sell and ship to Texas ?
Love to help out
no one sells the american chestnut nuts anymore used to be able to buy some from someone in michigan but they dont sell them anymore
Can I get some from you I’d love to have original American chestnut trees going here I’m from Nova Scotia Canada
how do i get the american chestnut seeds?
His website matermakerfilm.com/
There are, I believe 2 colleges with breeding programs, using a genetic mutation with genes from (wheat germ?) that causes a natural blight resistance. They are in the process of obtaining government permits to release/plant these trees into the native environment.
It's really to bad that the logging industry didn't leave these trees growing in the wild so that they could have developed their own resistant strains. Unfortunately, it became a race between the two!
I have about 200 Dunstan Chestnuts that I'm going to attempt to germinate in the spring. Although not purely American genetics, it's a way to get chestnuts in my location.
Most surviving wild trees survive as roots (which are resistant) and they’ll grow up a season or two and then get killed back. So they almost never get the chance to produce any fruit. There are pure American chestnuts growing in Washington and Oregon; they are from seeds brought before the blight hit.
The logging industry did not kill off the American chestnut it was imported into NY by they botanical society it came in on an imported Chinese chestnut and spread like wild fire and killed most of the native trees
@@williamfelts7530 ..... I understand that it was a disease that did the damage.
But, once the disease spread, the race was on to log off as many of the trees as possible.
Had this not taken place, surely there would have been a larger % that could have shown a stronger natural resistance.
Rarely does a virus or disease kill off 100% of anything. If it did, that would render the virus or disease obsolete, too.
@@sazji We found mature American chestnuts I have videos on my channel.
Can American Chestnut tree get herd immunity?
Great informative video but they seem to be all hibrids.Leaves are not with large dents like the american chestnuts( castanea dentata).
How are they doing now? They are valuable trees and the chestnuts look 100% american.
They have little asian genes or from the warmer weather specie of american chestnut ( the Chinquapin).
Would make sence since you said you lost trees due to cold.
EDIT,the most sensitive ones that you call high elevation are real american chestnuts ( castanea dentata).
Low elevation ones are another specie ( chinquapin)thats slightly more resistant to blight .So you get hybrids from the seeds if you plant them.American chestnuts but 2 different species.
Have you grown, or even seen in person, either species? Chinquapins have much smaller and much more glossy leaves, don't favor a central leader and produce their nuts in clusters of burrs with single nuts in each burr. The cold snap that he mentioned was the polar vortex that hit Kentucky and has no bearing on anything you have said.
@@danielsmith336 Im trying to grow the cold elevation american chestnuts,pure not GMO or hybrids.I have just one that germinated.
Never seen in person these trees but ive read a lot about them.
I also have 5 pawpaws like in your picture( one is Susquehanna) and 3 american persimmon seedlings,in Europe,Romania.
@@mihaiilie8808 I'm lucky in that I am within the natural range of all three species that you grow and in a state that has people who value all three. There is an American Chestnut Foundation orchard where I have been able to see the blight, pure Americans, hybrid Americans and pure Chinese for several years as well as a University planting with (struggling, almost dead from blight) pure American chestnuts, Chinquapins and various hybrids that I have visited on occasion.
I know that there were pure American trees planted in Europe as novelties before the blight but I don't know what areas you could find them in. Why aren't you working with the European or European X Japanese hybrids? Most of us in the United States who are interested in the American chestnut are interested because they were native and haven't completely vanished yet. For you there should be locally adapted European chestnuts and readily available named cultivars.
My picture is a nice sized wild cluster that I took a picture of to show a friend. The majority of the other wild trees around it produced smaller fruits but none of them were as good as a named variety. 'Susquehanna' is one of the very best, in my opinion so are 'Wells' and 'IXL'
It also produces good offspring, some of the KSU cultivars are Peterson cultivar seedlings. Be sure to plant your 'Susquehanna' seeds, you might find the next best cultivar. I grow 'Taytwo' 'NC-1' 'IXL' 'Prolific' 'Mango' 'KSU Atwood' 'KSU Benson' 'Wells' 'PA Golden' 'Susquehanna' and 'Sunflower' This year was the first year that most of my trees produced, so I didn't have to go out foraging.
With your persimmons there is a 50% chance that you will have males and then not all females will taste good.
Also within the American persimmon population there are two groups that are the same species but set fruit a little differently. If your seeds came from northern persimmons, females will produce seedless fruit without a male. If they came from southern persimmons, they will need pollination or else the fruit will not form. The line for that is arbitrarily the Ohio river, but I live a little south of it and some of the local trees set fruit without seeds (and thus were not pollinated). This has nothing to do with the actual location that they grow, it has to do with chromosome count. Most named cultivars were selected from the 90 chromosome population found north of the Ohio river.
Good luck with your seedlings and trees
@@danielsmith336 We have a lot of american native trees in east europe.
Black locust for instance its native american but we have huge forests of it planted everywhere and we make black locust honney.
It ields a ton of nectar per hectare wich its unbelievable and also high quality, transparent ,almost like water honney.Also the wood its of the highest quality .
Europes best honney called acacia honney ,its actually black locust honney,american native tree.
About persimmons ,i have 3 female seedlings but ive also planted a japanese kaki right next to them to help pollination.
I found a way to tell apart american persimmon seedlings from male to female,males grow much faster usually and females verry slow.Not always the case but most of the time.In Ukraine they made american persimmon hibrids with the japanese kaki.
I also want the little fruit ,black persimmon Diospyros Texana and in the future il grow that too.
About pawpaws,its hard to get anything in Europe apart from Sunflower and Prima but i got a Susquehanna wich flowered first time last year.
I have Susquehanna,Prima and Sunflower and 2 sunflower seedlings( not grafted like the first).
Altough Prima is self fertile like Sunflower,Susquehanna its my most prized tree and i will plant the seeds.
The american chestnut seeds i got from a russian friend and he got them from The American Chestnut foundation.
We dont like to eat chestnuts much in east europe and i plant the American chestnut because its an endangered tree,fast growing ,and i collect endangered trees and fast growing trees as a hobby( im a licensed enviromentalist and from there the passion but not anything comercial).
I grow rosewoods bonsai( dalbergia species ) ,cold hardy mahogany Toona Sinensis- fast growing for an example.
For comercial purposes ive planted 300 almonds and will be grafting 70% with Marcona and experimentally ive planted 150 iranian pistachios outdoor in USDA zone 6-7 .
Before the almonds orchard i collected cold hardy pecan seeds from all over the world and i grew about 80 trees.Then i moved them into somme large experimental root prunning pots and they all died because of the drought .
So initially i wanted to plant pecans and a few hickories( shellbark and
shagbark tiny nuts or with thick shell but i like them as much as walnuts) instead of almonds.
I tryed to plant the white walnut,J Cinerea wich i think its the best tasting in the world and also the healthyest ,due to the cold enviroment it lives.Wanted to cross the white walnut with a Carpathian walnut that has giant nuts the size of a turkey egg ,but the shell doesnt seal to well and they get mold.
Had an idea to make a giant walnut hibrid with core that gets out in one piece easy like the white walnut.
I also have a greenhouse where i grow lemons,Annona Cherimoya and otther tropical fruit trees.
How did they fruit when they're not blight resistant?
The blight affects the trunk and eventually girdles it, not allowing the nutrients and water to flow up. As long as the tree is alive and mature it will produce nuts .
@@nj1639 Im just wondering how it hasn't come to affect them till now.
@varun009 The bark protects the tree, as the tree grows the bark begins to split naturally. Any opening to the Circulatory system of the tree will allow an entrance for the fungus.
@@nj1639 thank you! That's very interesting!
Try hybrid
How can I buy some seeds?
Email him, he is selling them right now
@@danielsmith336 thank you
@@AStewSr You are welcome
You can find his email on his website, I've ordered from him two different years and have been happy with both orders.
I must be an American chestnut hairy 🌰 🌰.
Let me go check my stipules......
Some have them parallel and some have none. Some have fuzz others none. Genetics is a funny thing as my original two trees have an unknown provenance but I have considered them hybrids.
That’s a Chinese chestnut it has dentate leaves and no pointy nut.
If only you didn't have that American drawl!!!
He’s from Kentucky, it’s how people talk, and they probably don’t care if you approve or not. 😉
@@sazji Damn right they don't!