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DARTMOUTH — Lined up like soldiers in the back of Scott Dunn’s yard, six American chestnut saplings stand tall, propped up by a white plastic tube. Although they’re all around the same age, they stand at varying heights, from 5 to 8 feet tall.
“Trees are like people,” Dunn said. “They have different levels of vigor.”
This is part of a series of stories commemorating the 250th anniversary of American Independence and the legacy of the Revolution.
In 1776, Dunn’s property in Dartmouth would have been thick with chestnuts. Castanea dentata, the American chestnut, checkered most of the East Coast, its nuts filling out Native Americans’ diets and its wood later forming the cabins, churches, and other buildings of European settlers.
But in the early 1900s, a fungus called Cryphonectria parasitica all but wiped out the once-ubiquitous species, devastating forests across the Eastern Seaboard and cutting off a crucial food source for humans and wildlife. The fungus overtakes the tree once it reaches the sapling stage.
That means that although American chestnuts continue to grow today, the trees can never reach adulthood. For that reason, the species is considered functionally extinct.
Since the blight appeared, however, scientists have worked to restore the American chestnut to its former glory. The American Chestnut Society grants tools and resources for amateur horticulturists like Dunn to plant their own varieties, reasoning that if enough trees get planted, some may grow resistant to the pathogen. For 14 years, Dunn has bred endless varieties of American chestnut in hopes that some saplings make it to maturity.
A carpenter by trade, Dunn has long had an appreciation for the natural world. He’s an avid gardener and well-versed in the country’s conservationist history. But his interest in chestnuts began with a sapling in his childhood backyard.
“The chestnut disease only kills what’s above ground, not what’s in the ground,” Dunn said. “So when I was a kid, there was one that kept resprouting. It would maybe live 10 years and produce some nuts and then it would die.”
His oldest chestnut tree is 12 years old, having grown roughly 20 feet tall in the backyard of his Vermont home.
Chestnut cankers
Prior to the blight, American chestnuts covered over 200 million acres of eastern woodlands, including the South Coast region, ranging from Westport to Fairhaven, then known as Old Dartmouth. Rich in Vitamin C and antioxidants, their fruit rounded out the diets of the Wampanoag tribe and other Indigenous communities from Maine to Mississippi. Later, European colonists used chestnuts to fatten hogs and cattle.
Chestnut trees were also an important source of timber, since chestnut wood was dense and rot-resistant.
But in 1904, Cryphonectria parasitica arrived from Asia and decimated the American chestnut population in just 50 years. Infected trees were marked by “cankers” on their bark and stems that would eventually weaken the entire plant, reducing the existing population to young shrubs.
In the 1920s, horticulturists attempted to revive the species by crossbreeding it with Chinese varieties, to limited success. In the 1950s, the rise of nuclear technology led scientists to try exposing chestnut seeds to radiation in hopes the resulting mutations might resist the disease.
A catalogue of local New Bedford flora published in 1853 noted the American chestnut’s “excellent flavor.” Today, the roasted chestnuts sold in grocery stores and city streets are mostly imported from Europe or Asia.
Meanwhile, Dunn’s chestnut varieties are over 90 percent American DNA, and some of his trees have already produced some nuts. He buys his seeds online — it’s a process anyone can do, he said.
“I like to roast them in a pan and eat them with a nice glass of port,” Dunn said. “There’s nothing better.”
Starting from seed
In another life, Dunn might have been a mechanical engineer. Two of his brothers followed in his father’s footsteps to attend engineering school at Northeastern University; Dunn, always drawn to nature and working with his hands, studied environmental and civil engineering. After graduating, Dunn’s appreciation for trees (somewhat counterintuitively) morphed into a career in carpentry.
“A lot of the old buildings I’ve worked on have massive chestnut beams,” Dunn said. “Just seeing pictures of them all before the disease … I was very sad. They were massive trees.”
Dunn, now 70, lives in Sharon, but for the past several years he has been remodeling a home in Dartmouth to share with friends in the summer. Although the second half of the home is little more than demolished clapboard and framing, five chestnut saplings already line the edge of the backyard.
Dunn buys his seeds in late fall, storing them in his refrigerator for months to mimic winter. In early springtime, he transfers the seeds to his basement complete with a purple, UV growing light and waits for them to sprout. By May, they’re ready to go to the greenhouse to incubate.
This is the stage of Dunn’s latest crop today, dozens of leafy sprouts less than six inches tall. Not all of them will make it to the sapling stage, Dunn explains, and even fewer will bear nuts in young adulthood.
Dunn typically waits until the fall to plant his trees in the ground because that’s when the plants enter their dormant stage. In that stage, the stems and leaves are less likely to be damaged in the moving and planting process.
But earlier this spring, Dunn ventured across the street to plant four of his American chestnut saplings in front of the Dartmouth School Administration building. Like the trees in his yard, each sapling is encased in a plastic tube to protect their leaves from deer.
With any luck, Dunn hopes they’ll grow to arm-stretching size like their 19th century forebears, showering chestnuts onto the manicured lawn.
“Seeing some of that nature that used to be here and trying to help restore it — especially as the forests are losing some of their diversity — it’s a simple thing for me to do,” Dunn said. “It’s not hard. You just gotta do it.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct Scott Dunn’s age.
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.
Excellent article! Both our stately elm and magnificent chestnut trees suffered from blights. God bless Mr. Dunn for his heroic efforts to help restore chestnut trees to the area.