Chestnut origins.AMERICAN FORESTS American Forests is a nonprofit conservation organization that promotes healthy forests and urban tree planting. The organization was established in 1875 as the American Forestry Association, by physician/horticulturist John Aston Warder and a group of like-minded citizens : My daughter has a paper to write for her seventh grade science class. She needs to know how the American chestnut got its name. Maureen Fagan Via e-mail Howard Burnett responds: The American chestnut (castanea dentata) was once a principle component of the eastern hardwood forests, but the species has been almost totally removed by the chestnut blight chestnut blight Plant disease caused by the fungus Endothia parasitica. Accidentally imported from East Asia and first observed in 1904 in New York, it has killed almost all native American chestnuts (Castanea dentata) in the U.S. . The blight blight, general term for any sudden and severe plant disease or for the agent that causes it. The term is now applied chiefly to diseases caused by bacteria (e.g., bean blights and fire blight of fruit trees), viruses (e.g., soybean bud blight), fungi (e.g. infects and kills the trees, but the root systems survive and continue to send up sprouts. Some of these sprouts become small trees before they are attacked by the blight and killed. Hopefully, current breeding programs A breeding program is the planned breeding of a group of animals or plants, usually involving at least several individuals and extending over several generations. Breeding programs are commonly employed in several fields where humans wish to manage the characteristics of their will one day provide blight-resistant chestnuts for "restocking" the hardwood forests. I assume the inquiry has to do with the Latin name? "Castanea" is a Latin word for "chestnut," and that is plain enough. The "dentata" comes from the leaves, which are "dentate dentate /den·tate/ (den´tat) notched; tooth-shaped. den·tate adj. Edged with toothlike projections; toothed. " or toothed around the edges. The genus castenea is found in a number of places throughout the world, and early settlers familiar with European chestnuts, or Chinese or Japanese chestnuts, were no doubt pleased to discover the native American chestnut, which provided a source of food that reminded them of home. Chestnut trees were easily recognizable as a "cousin" of the trees they were familiar with in their homelands. |
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