For six years SKLT and the URI Master Gardeners have been running a nursery. Not a nursery for youngsters, but rather one for an almost extinct tree, the majestic American Chestnut. On a lovely piece of land trust property, surrounded by fields, hidden from Tuckertown Road, and visited regularly by bluebirds, almost 230 new seedlings are being coddled and coaxed to grow. These are hybrid trees with both American and Chinese chestnut genes. The Chinese chestnut is immune to the devastating disease that claimed all of New England’s towering chestnut trees, but lacked the height and breadth of the more commanding American chestnut. Researchers have now bred the immune gene into the American chestnut in hopes that the New England forest can soon be repopulated with a new, immune American chestnut.
