British Girl Reacts to The American Chestnut Massacre… How Did This Happen?!

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hello there, my lovelies. How are we doing today? I'm very well. Thank you for asking.

[00:00:06]Right, today guys, we're going to be catching up on another history video. I feel like it's been a while since I've watched a good history video, specifically about American history, which I'm very much enjoying getting to to like learn a little bit more about it. I was quite fortunate. I know I mentioned this a few times. I was quite fortunate in the fact that during my education in high school, I don't think this is very common, but my history class, my GCSEs, um we did quite a big block um of American history, which is absolutely fascinating for anyone out there, any pompous old generation Brit or anyone else out there that claims that America hasn't got a history or a culture for that matter is that is absolutely ridiculous.

[00:00:51]there is a very rich history and it doesn't just start from you know the discovery of the of the new world you know it goes beyond that and it's much older and yes not many of our schoolgoers actually get the opportunity to learn specifically about American history I think I was in a bit of a minority there but I consider myself very very fortunate because it's very very interesting but unfortunately not a lot of Brits will have an awful lot of idea uh an awful you know a lot of understanding and learning about American history. It's sad because it's a very very rich history and it's so so interesting and so varied even just over the span of what three to 400 years.

[00:01:38]Anyway, I'm blabbing.

[00:01:41]So this video today has been requested to buy me a coffee from Phil Jones.

[00:01:46]Thank you so much for your support Phil.

[00:01:48]Thank you my lovely. Now, Phil says, "Hello, Boommy. Longtime watcher, first time recommener here." Well, thank you very much. I hope you're doing well. I I'm doing very, very well, Phil. Thank you so much. I hope you're doing well.

[00:02:00]Um, I adore your love of American history. So, as a fellow history buff, I'd love to recommend you a video about a longforgotten piece of our natural history. The American Chestnut Massacre by is it Wend Wendy Gang? I've not heard of this channel before. This is a new channel for me, Wendy Gang. Okay. Right.

[00:02:19]Um, well, if this is lost to the history of many Americans, it means I have no clue.

[00:02:27]I've never even heard of this before.

[00:02:29]So, here we are. Educate me. Very, very interesting. So, the Chestnut Massacre.

[00:02:35]I have not got the foggiest idea what this is about. I don't know what period of history this is. So, let's crack on with the video. I've already done an awful lot of talk. I say that every video. I know. I can't help it. I just chat. I chat away. So, let's catch up with this. This is the Chestnut Massacre. Okay, so guys, if you're enjoying these reactions as well, don't forget to like and subscribe. Thank you so much, my lovelies. If you're interested, I have a buy me a coffee account. That link is over here. And if you would like to help support my channel any further, I have a Patreon account. And if you want to check that out at all, that link is in the description just below there. Okay.

[00:03:12]Every December, a jazz standard drifts through malls and living rooms in which Nat King Cole crunes about chestnuts roasting on an open fire. It's called the Christmas song. Originally written and performed by Mel Tormet. I've heard it, you've heard it, and we've all heard it. Probably hummed it to oursel while putting up Christmas decorations. But have you ever looked around and asked, "Hey, where are all the chestnuts?" And also, why would I roast those by an open fire? Well, if you've asked yourself this, you're not alone. Most Americans have never seen one roasting because for most of the 20th century, there have been no chestnuts to roast. The song evokes a memory of a plant that silently slipped out of our collective experience. It's like hearing a tune about rotary phones while scrolling through Tik Tok. So, where are all the chestnuts? Well, the answer to that question isn't just a fun fact. It's the opening chapter of a forgotten American saga. It's the story of a tree that once reigned supreme over a continent, then vanished almost overnight. It involves, and I'm not kidding, mad botonists, secret agents disguised as peasants in China, pioneering plant collectors, railroad tycoons, and poor farming families who would turn the forest floor into their grocery store. It's about what happens when human ambition, both noble and greedy, collides with nature's delicate balance. And as with all good American tragedies, there's a song about it. So, if you're ready to journey from the heights of the Appalachian ridges to the dark halls of the Bronx Zoo, buckle up and let's resurrect the forgotten spirit of the American Chestnut. Before I get started, just want to mention that we've extended the sale of the redacted collection. So, you can still get the hat, jacket, shirt, and notebook at the link in the description at windagon.shop. It's available for a couple more weeks. Get it while you can.

[00:04:55]And thank you all for the support that >> Wendyon I I can actually remember what I've just referred to this channel as before. Oh. Oh, fail. It was because I think you called it Wendy gang. It's not Wendy. Wendy goon. Okay. Okay. Okay.

[00:05:08]Okay.

[00:05:10]I'm very very wrong.

[00:05:14]Out of the way, we're going to go ahead and get into it. But as always, thank you for watching. Picture the eastern half of North America in the late 1800s.

[00:05:22]Before highways and clear-cut farms, before skyscrapers and suburbs, a continuous green canopy stretched from Maine to Mississippi. And within that canopy, one tree towered quite literally over everything else. The American chestnut. The American chestnut wasn't just a common tree. It was a dominant tree. Conservative estimates suggest that at one time over 4 billion chestnut trees blanketed the Appalachin range.

[00:05:47]One in every four hardwoods across the forest was a chestnut, which means that if you looked across a hillside, it would have been hard to miss them. Now, forests of oak, maple, and beach existed, sure, but the chestnut was the monarch. And these weren't modest shrubs. Early foresters described saplings that grew as tall as a person within a couple of years. Mature trees routinely topped 100 ft, and some giants on the western slopes of the Smoky Mountains hit 130 with >> So, am I right in thinking that there's not that many chestnut trees uh across America these days? Is that a wrong assumption to take from this? We've got loads. They've got to be related, haven't they? Maybe it's not exactly the same. The American chestnut.

[00:06:33]Maybe it's slightly different. I I have no idea. Is it different from the European >> trunks that were so large it would take five people linking arms to encircle them. Imagine walking through a grove where you feel like an ant looking up at a living skyscraper. Sure, experiences like that aren't uncommon out west, especially with large sequoia trees or redwoods in the California forest. But the East Coast used to have its fair share of green giants as well. The wood these giants produced wasn't just big, it was miraculous. A perfect blend of strength and workability, the timber was lightweight, straight grain, and famously rotistant. Due in large part to its high tanic acid content. In a world before pressuretreated lumber, chestnut wood was as close to immortal as a tree could get. Living in the chestnut era meant you were likely surrounded by them, even if you didn't think about it.

[00:07:20]The treere's honey brown beams held up barns and church rafters. Its shingles deflected rain from your roof, and its split rails marked the edge of your pasture. Have you?

[00:07:29]>> So, a very, very valuable tree. Ever seen an old church or farm with fence post or ceiling beams from the late 1800s and you look at them and think, "Wow, it's amazing those things are still standing." There's a high likelihood that the reason they're still standing is because it's chestnut.

[00:07:46]Railroad barons quickly realized that they could sink railroad ties into damp ground without fear of rot. So millions of chestnut railroad ties were laid each year. Plan explorer J. Russell Smith, and yes, that is his occupation, joked that by the time an oak acorn grew big enough to be a baseball bat, a chestnut stump had already regrown into another railroad tie. You're probably getting a picture of how important this timber was. Gate post, chairs, caskets, tool handles, and wine presses were all made from chestnut. A cabin built from a single massive tree stands as an almost mythical illustration of how just one organism could shelter an entire family.

[00:08:24]On chilly evenings, smoke from a chestnut fire smelled sweet and earthy.

[00:08:28]People swore it cured colds. To own a chestnut grove was to possess not only food, but the raw materials of shelter, commerce, and even communication. The chestnut was a tree and an ecological lynchpin, not only for the people that used it, but it shaded streams and moderated microclimates. And its annual shower of organic material fed everything from earthworms to brook trout. and chestnut leaves provided nutrients to soil, boosting nitrogen, phosphorus, and magnesium content.

[00:08:56]Remove it and the first point of a metaphorical web would start to sag. But perhaps the chestnut's most generous gift wasn't its wood, but its nuts. In autumn, spicy birds the size of a hedgehog would fall and split open, releasing shiny brown nuts that were sweet right off the branch. Unlike acorns, which require hours of boiling to remove the bitter tannins, chestnuts were like forced candy. They wrote, >> "I didn't even know you could eat acorns.

[00:09:23]Oh, I suppose they must be edible, but are they pleasant to eat? Are they nice?"

[00:09:27]>> Toasted into a soft bread-like texture, milder and sweeter than any almond. And a single mature tree could drop thousands of nuts, sometimes producing three or even 10 bushels in a season, which I'm no bushel or tree nut expert, and I assume you aren't either. So, we'll just say that's probably a lot.

[00:09:45]Multiply that by 4 billion trees and you start to understand why people joke that food literally fell from the sky during this era. By the fall, the forest floor would be blanketed several inches deep in shiny chestnuts. While turkeys, bears, deer, passenger pigeons, squirrels, hogs devoured them. Pigs raised on chestnuts were said to develop a sweet flavor that made Appalachin pork coveted across the country. Farmers turned their pigs loose into chestnut groves, then rounded them up a few weeks later when the hogs were fat and happy.

[00:10:16]And you may hear that and think it's sad because the pig's about to die, but would you rather the pig be sad and upset and then die or happy and then die? Think about it. One Virginia wrote of nuts by lantern trying to beat the turkeys and hogs to the fallen nut so his family could eat. And as you can imagine, the chestnut was intimately tied to the rhythm of the seasons. In spring, the forest floor would be a mosaic of wild flowers peeking through last year's fallen leaves and tender chestnut shoots would thrust upward like eager children racing to join the canopy. Its July blossoms coated the hills in a dusting of pollen so thick that locals said it looked like Christmas snow in the summer. Autumn was the festival of abundance. Burrs fell by the thousands, bursting open after the first frost and spilling shiny nuts across.

[00:11:00]>> That's not a chestnut. That That's a conqueror, isn't it? That's a buckeye.

[00:11:06]>> The forest floor. The sound of birds cracking and nuts thutdding to the leaves became background music punctuated by the clatter of squirrels and deer. Even winter was a time for beauty. Under bare branches, cabins filled of chestnut beam stood strong.

[00:11:20]Stacks of cured wood waiting to feed fires all season long. The cycle gave rhythm to community life. And a lot of this may sound like exaggeration for the sake of poetry. And sure, maybe I've done that a little bit, but people really structured their lives around the chestnut cycle. Schools were closed for chestnuting season. Families camped in the mountains with horses and carts to collect nuts they would swap at the store for coffee, sugar, or flour. In West Virginia, one station shipped 155,000 lbs of chestnuts in a single year. The nuts were currency, nourishment, and tradition all at once.

[00:11:54]Families would take multi-day journeys to the mountains, set up camp beneath the trees, wake up before dawn to beat the wildlife to the bounty.

[00:12:01]>> So very very important to to the the well-being, the livelihood of an awful lot of people.

[00:12:08]>> It's also worth noting, and this kind of relates to the point of the whole video, but is also just something I want to keep perspective of. This was an entire lifestyle to so many Americans not that long ago. Like, think about all the routine things that we're used to now that we kind of take for granted, but they're baked into our normal life.

[00:12:27]Things like making sure the tread on your tires is good before the winter snow, or making sure all the gaps in your house are sealed up before the spring showers. Sure, with modern agriculture, other than prices going up, most of us aren't used to only getting some foods at certain times of the year, but as far as tradition goes, there's still a lot of things that we even incidentally keep sacred. I'm sure not a ton of us are eating candy canes or drinking hot chocolate in July. But these are things we don't even think about. They're things that just are. And I'm sure for the people that lived back then, the chestnut is simply something that was. Even living in Appalachia, I would hear people talk about it, but I had no experience with the tree myself.

[00:13:04]It's fascinating and tragic when something that was taken for granted because it was so plentiful becomes something that used to be. Children played games beneath the large canopy of the tree while their parents swapped stories and recipes around campfires.

[00:13:18]Some nuts were eaten on the spot. Others were roasted and mashed into porridge or dried for winter breads. Traders would weigh out sacks in the local store and tally their value against sugar, coffee, and cloth. Returning home with a wagon full of nuts, families knew they had secured another season of sweetness. For lack of a better description, this was an annual harvest that fed communities and provided an economic boost in hard times. It was a staple and a currency.

[00:13:42]One of the reasons that the American chestnut was such a lifesaver when it came to food is because it didn't require refrigeration. Again, something we take for granted nowadays, but something that used to be hard to come by. Nuts stored well through the winter and could be ground into a sweet gluten-free flour that thickened stews and made bread. Families roasted them whole, boiled them into porridge, candied them as a treat, and even brewed them into a coffee-like drink when money for actual coffee was scarce. Chestnut flour mixed with cornmeal produced breads that lasted longer and tasted better.

[00:14:14]>> I based on this I can't believe I've not actually tried chestnuts or chestnut related products.

[00:14:22]I want to try them now >> than either alone. And in many Appalachin communities, the groves were considered common property. They were open to the poor as much as they were to the land owners. But despite their wide use by the economically disadvantaged, chestnuts weren't just for the poor or the rich. Harvesting chestnuts was one of the few activities that bridged class and race. A child could fill a sack and know that come winter, there would be something sweet on the table. When you add up the yield of a single tree, which keep in mind, these are 10 bushels that can weigh up to 50 lbs each, you realize that a modest grove of chestnut trees could produce quite literally tons of food, which was very important at a time when cash crops like wheat or corn might fail. So, the chestnut was obviously important from a practical standpoint, but its purpose and use were so ingrained in American society, touching every aspect of people's lives that it became more than just a plant. It was >> was it quite a a hardy supply of food as well. So, I know like I don't know this chap's name actually. What's his name? I feel so rude when I can't refer to people by the name because I don't know the name. Anyway, um like uh the narrator here says, you know, it becomes more important to to locals, to everyone really when you consider how temperamental some crops can be like in some years if you've had a particularly bad harvest. Would you be able to guarantee that the chestnut yield was still going to be in abundance or is it subject to I don't think they're subject to like frost or particularly wet seasons or anything like that. Are they >> a cultural symbol? In 1883, clergyman Charles G. Ames used a chestnut tree as a metaphor for divine presence in his poem Sunday in a chestnut tree. In this poem, the tree is almost sacramental, a place where a child gathers nuts and feels that quote, "good gifts shower upon us here unearned." Henry Wodsworth Longfellow opened his famous poem, The Village Blacksmith, with the phrase, "Under a spreading chestnut tree, the village smith he stands." In the poem, the blacksmith sets his sweaty forehead against a chestnut trunk for reassurance, suggesting that nature could absorb human suffering and offer silent strength. Popular songs at the time, like Opening the Chestnut Burr, used the act of prying open a prickly husk as a metaphor for overcoming obstacles, promising that patience would reveal sweetness within. The Cherokee people celebrated chestnut time and regarded the nuts as a form of social security during famine. Their legends wo the chestnut into their understanding of the planets and stars, comparing its bounty to literal mana from heaven. For them, the chestnut was used as operating instructions for life. It taught patience. You have to wait for the frost before you pick. It taught community.

[00:17:10]Share your harvest and remember that the grove belongs to all. And it taught humility. Nature provides gifts, but you must show up. Do the work of gathering.

[00:17:19]From cradle to grave, the chestnut was there.

[00:17:22]>> The wood it provided rocked babies and handcarved cribs and built the coffins that carried loved ones to their rest.

[00:17:28]It was known to many as the redwood of the east, a living, breathing pillar that underpinned entire cultures. When elders told children to mind the trees, they were teaching resource management and respect for a life sustaining partner. But then one day, as you can probably tell if you just look outside your window, the chestnuts were gone, removed from nature due to human error, which I'll get to in a bit. When the chestnuts disappeared, all those moral metaphors and lessons lost their anchor.

[00:17:57]Preachers could still quote Longfellow, but no longer was there a literal spreading tree outside to remind you what it felt like to stand beneath it. A child hearing about chestnut time in Cherokee tradition might look out at a hillside stripped of that tree and feel as if a page has been torn from their folklore. So, how did this all go wrong?

[00:18:15]And more importantly, what did we do?

[00:18:17]Well, in the mid 1800s, while the chestnut was thriving, the British Empire found themselves borderline obsessed with plants. This >> it's always the British.

[00:18:28]Damn it.

[00:18:30]What? What? What have they done now?

[00:18:33]>> Seems to pop up in a lot of my historical videos from around this time, but they wanted tea, rubber, and anything that could be harvested and monetized. Well, one of their most daring plant hunters, and yes, that was a job back then, was Robert Fortune. His name is literally Robert Fortune.

[00:18:49]>> Fortune.

[00:18:50]>> It's like a monopoly character. Fortune was a Scottish botonist with a knack for espionage. Fortune once disguised himself in Chinese clothing, learned Mandarin, and slipped past China's closed city walls to steal their secrets. We've got people named Robert Fortune becoming international spies and learning languages to steal plants. Fort >> Oh, wow.

[00:19:12]I imagine Mining is not an easy language to master, especially hundreds of years ago. 's greatest heist involved learning production techniques from China, snatching their tea plants and transplanting them to India, which shattered China's monopoly at the time.

[00:19:27]He was like a Victorian era James Bond with a knack for disrupting economies.

[00:19:32]And he also had a shovel. But fortune didn't stop fortune.

[00:19:36]>> Among the many plants he sent west was the Japanese chestnut tree. Japanese variant was related to the American chestnut, but smaller and more orchard friendly. These trees were prized because they could produce large nuts and didn't grow to the towering heights of their American cousins.

[00:19:51]>> I was just about to suggest, oh, have these like out competed the American chestnut tree for resources? Maybe it kind of bred them out. Um but but no, they're um they're quite valuable.

[00:20:03]They've got the big bigger nuts.

[00:20:05]>> The height of the American chestnut is really cool when it's in a forest, but not really cool if you're trying to grow it in your backyard. I mean, maybe one or two, but you can see how a field of them would become a problem because at that point, it's not even a field. You just made a new forest. By the late 19th century, nursery men like SB Parsons of New York and William Perry of New Jersey, imported thousands of Japanese chestnuts. Luther Burbank, the famous horiculturalist and plantreeder, planted over 10,000 Japanese chestnut trees in his California nursery. Also, what do you mean you haven't heard of Luther Burbank, the famous horiculturalist? Are you stupid? Mail order cataloges bragged about this exotic tree that you could grow in your own yard. Entrepreneurs envisioned a new cash crop. And they might have been right. Or at least they might have been right if it wasn't for one big problem. These enterprising nursery men trying to bring the Japanese chestnut to the new world. Well, they were importing more than just the trees.

[00:21:01]The Japanese chestnut co-evolved with a fungus called kryphon tria parasetika.

[00:21:06]In its native range, the fungus caused little harm because the Japanese trees had built up resistance over thousands of years.

[00:21:13]>> However, you're going to introduce them alongside the American chestnut trees that have not got the same immunity.

[00:21:23]It's going to wipe them out. Oh no. Oh no.

[00:21:27]>> And you can immediately see where this is going. The American chestnuts, however, had never met this pathogen before and therefore had no natural resistance. It was like bringing the bubanic plague to a previously isolated island. And because there were no quarantine laws or biocurity measures at the time, the fungus hitched a ride on the imported crops and spread undetected. I imagine even at that point they're not even too clued up on pathogens or the spread of fungal infections and things, but you know around trees or shrubs or whatnot.

[00:22:03]Oh, okay. Um, these things they always end up bad when people try and play guard a little bit and bring fauna or animals or anything from other countries and reintroduce them into a completely different ecosystem. How many times has it happened, guys? Over and over again.

[00:22:22]>> 1904, a quiet epidemic began in the most unexpected place, the Bronx Zoo. Herman Merkel, Zoo's chief forester, noticed small orange lesions on the chestnut trees and treated them with fungicide.

[00:22:34]He didn't know it yet, but those lesions were early signs of chestnut blight, a devastating disease that would almost entirely eradicate the American chestnut.

[00:22:44]>> Did treating it with fungicide willy-nilly just completely obliterate well trying to obliterate them, has it created some kind of slight small number of fungal resistance? So potentially you're strengthening the pathogen as well.

[00:23:02]>> Merkel's fungicide was about as useful as a bandage on a bullet wound. And within a year nearly every chestnut on the grounds was infected. By 1906, the fungus had spread into Brooklyn and unleashed a wave of panic. News headlines declared all chestnut trees in America threatened and estimated losses of $25 million. Today, those losses would total in hundreds of millions.

[00:23:24]Newspapers printed maps with expanding circles showing infected counties. The blight itself was brutally efficient.

[00:23:30]Cryphan Tria appears at Tika or let's just call it blight doesn't wrap around a tree like a boa constrictor. It >> So again, with all of the information um we've just been given here surrounding how important chestnut trees are to communities.

[00:23:47]Um yeah, uh that that's not going to go down well. How does the fungus spread?

[00:23:54]Does it have to come into direct contact with the trees or is it um like through spores? So, it just travels kind of on the breeze or >> oozes into every tiny exposed wound where branch is rubbed or a beetle chewed forming a sunken canker. The fungus secretes oxylic acid that kills cambium tissue, cutting off the flow of water and nutrients throughout the treere's root and leaf system. Above the infection, leaves wilt and branches die.

[00:24:23]And below it, sprouts erupt as the root system panics and tries to reproduce. In Asia, chestnuts evolve thick bark and chemical defenses to compartmentalize the infection. But American chestnuts had none of these traits and were left entirely helpless against it. Emily Dubrey of Penn State later likened the blight to smallpox for trees, describing how the blight spread quickly and efficiently. Wind carried the spores for miles. Woodpeckers chipping away at cankers spread the blight from tree to tree. Loggers boots track spores along railways, reaching the groves as the men moved.

[00:24:57]>> It's just going to spread like wild fly.

[00:25:03]Like wild fire. Um yeah, if if it's carried on on the wind on the breeze through spores, yeah, it's going to reach the other side of the American coast.

[00:25:16]What how quickly? How quickly does it did it spread?

[00:25:20]>> Governments mobilized or they tried to state agencies cut down and set fire to entire groves to try and stop the spread. In Pennsylvania, a so-called vigorous control program tried burning, monitoring, and spraying, but it was like fighting an invading modern army with slingshots and arrows. Farmers held meetings. Men carried axes and saws into the woods with orders to chop down any chestnut showing signs of infection and set the logs ablaze. Boy Scouts trained to identify cankers, marked trunks with ribbons, and reported them to state foresters. Children who had grown up climbing chestnut branches watched them bleed orange sap and die within a few seasons. By the time the plant quarantine act passed about six years later in 1912, the fungus had already leapfrogged state lines. By 1915, all efforts were abandoned. Governments, farmers, united community, all had failed to stop the blight. Old-times spoke of the blight the way one might speak of a war or a plague, as something that came without warning, left only ruins. The journals describe the eeriness of walking through acres of dead trees, bark sloing off like ash.

[00:26:26]Photographs from the era show forest of ghostly white trunks, bark peeled away, skeletal giants standing like tombstones. Before the blight, it was said that a squirrel using only the tops of the eastern redwood could travel from Maine to Florida without touching the ground. After the blight, there were almost no branches left to leap upon. By the early 1940s, the once dominant tree was effectively gone. Sprouts still emerged, but they were condemned to die before they could set seed. The chestnut that once towered over the eastern forest had been reduced to an understory shrub, a shell of its former glory. It's worth pausing here to consider the wider context that made this disaster possible. The first was a suddenly trendy fascination for botney held by many at the time. Victorian society was gripped with a passion for exotic plants. Yes. Botanical gardens and wealthy patrons financed expeditions to collect orchids, rodendrons, chamellas >> and aroneries and conservatories that contained very exotic plants and everything but all the rage >> and any novelty that could impress neighbors back home. Local newspapers reported on the exploits of plant hunters, and the public devoured traval logs filled with tales of hardship and far away jungles and hairraising escapes. Robert Fortune and his peers were celebrated as heroic figures bringing bounty to the empire. Very few questioned the complex moral circumstances of plant theft, let alone the ecological risks. Fortune justified his disguises and deceptions by arguing that spreading knowledge benefited humanity, which was a common perspective that blurred the lines between exploration and exploitation. He dressed in Chinese clothing not just for camouflage, but because he believed he deserved access to what China kept secret. The irony is that this hunger for novelty paved the way for catastrophe. Once the plants that had evolved abroad encountered the naive host at home, these entrepreneurs operated at the intersection of science and commerce. Luther Burbank, the of course famous horiculturalist who we're all familiar with I mentioned earlier, was already famous for creating new varieties of plums, peaches, and potatoes when he planted his chestnut nursery. In his diaries, he boasted of cultivating plants like an artist mixes colors, combining genetics to paint better fruit. He saw the Japanese chestnut as raw material for an improved American crop. In his Santa Rosa orchards, seedlings stretched across fields in neat rows, each labeled and observed. Burbank would walk among them daily, noting which grew fastest and bore the largest nuts. He was driven as much by curiosity as he was by the knowledge that success could mean millions. Coleman Sober, a lumberman in Pennsylvania, took a different gamble.

[00:29:05]His 300 acre grove represented the faith that a new variety of chestnut could become the next big timber staple. Mail order cataloges fed the frenzy by promising that any homesteader could strike it rich with chestnuts.

[00:29:17]Advertisements praised the treere's compact size and the fact that they bore nuts at a relatively young age. And they painted an image of orchard scenes with shaded lawns and baskets overflowing with chestnuts.

[00:29:29]>> I I suppose it's it's a they're they're driven by greed as much as they are curiosity.

[00:29:37]I h I get it and I kind of feel like there there's definitely been an ignorance amongst, you know, bringing over different species of animals as well and plants, but bringing them over because they want them as well. I mean, were they really kept a secret by the Chinese or is it just a case of they don't want to trade? I have no idea. Um, yeah, I they're they're ignorant of the fact that they can carry disease and just and just not thrive in different environments or outbreed more local species. So, I I don't know. Do do I think it's totally immoral? I don't think generally it's been immoral. I think it's just been a fair bit of ignorance. But the marketing never mentioned microorganisms or intercontinental disease. Had those warnings existed, I'm not sure it would have been enough to dissuade people's excitement for the crops. The same people who quite literally help sew the seeds of disaster. And I understand that on the one hand, it's easy to sit here in the 21st century and criticize humankind for not having the knowledge that we do now about biology. And the story does have plenty of characters who deserve their share of the blame. But what sometimes gets lost in the simple narrative of greedy importers, while true in its own right, is the genuine wonder and optimism of the time. When cataloges arrived in local mailboxes, they promised that Japanese chestnuts would transform the poorest hillside farm into a profitable orchard. Parsons wrote glowing pamphlets about how the tree bore early with nuts as big as a silver dollar. If you're a struggling farmer trying to keep your family fed, why wouldn't you get in on it? Perry touted them as the ideal tree for small homesteads. And as we've well established in those days, a crop like this could mean the difference between easily feeding your family or watching them starve. Burbank, ever the showman, wrote in his journals about feeling like a magician conjuring new fruits from the soil. He called his Santa Rosa nursery a quote world of unsung experiments.

[00:31:46]Visitors to his fields described row upon row of young chestnuts, each labeled like an experiment in a living laboratory. He would taste nuts from thousands of seedlings, spit some out in disgust, and pocket others with a gleam in his eye. The mail order boom meant that housewives in Iowa and factory workers in Ohio could order a tree by postal card and have it delivered to their door. Newspapers ran testimonials for men who planted one Japanese chestnut and were pulling in extra dollars selling nuts at the train station. Against this backdrop, what warnings there were about invisible fungi sounded about as legitimate as doomsday profits. Novelty and abundance were highly valued in this era of American culture. And the notion that a microscopic organism could ruin everything probably seemed absurd >> until it wasn't. And sure, it's not like Parsons or the people that brought the plant over in the first place had some grand scheme of wiping out an entire American population of tree. It was an accident, sure, but it was an accident that came from carelessness. Even given the nuance mentioned before about how excited the American public was. We also can't pretend that the death of the American chestnut was an innocent mistake. When it comes down to it, the origins of the blight's presence in the US can still be traced back to greed and oddly superficial motives. Stateside nurseries wanted exotic stock.

[00:33:03]Homeowners wanted ornamental varieties that look different than the families next door. And I suppose the people profiting from bringing these Japanese chestnuts over, they're cashing in, aren't they, on the notion that, you know, people desperately want to avoid starvation and and poverty. So if the promise is, oh, you can plant one of our trees and then you have an abundance, you have an a food source and it Yeah, it's going to be great. Of course. So I suppose they are still profiting, aren't they? Okay. So yeah, it's I'd say it's largely driven by money as many things are driven by greed.

[00:33:46]>> And businesses along the Hudson were more than happy to give people what they wanted, feeding into their interests.

[00:33:52]Importing Asian chestnuts wasn't about improving the American landscape. It was about showing off. And in chasing the novelty of a foreign species, people ignored the value of what they already had. the American chestnut, a tree that had been feeding, sheltering, and sustaining communities for generations.

[00:34:08]And to make matters worse, these shipments weren't handled with any real caution. The plant trade of the era basically ran on a handshake in a shipping manifest. Trees arrived infected, sometimes visibly weakened or dying, and they were still planted without quarantine or inspection. Not because people were unaware that disease existed, but because slowing down the trade would cut into profit. greed and vanity don't like being told to wait.

[00:34:32]And the chestnut blight wasn't the only warning sign of what this carelessness could do. I spoke in my Ford Landia video about how there were several known instances of people trying to import rubber trees only for them to die out or spread disease. And this same era's lax attitudes had already unleashed the gypsy moth, which escaped in New England and went on to destroy millions of acres of forest, leaving entire hillsides bald and ecosystems gutted. The Japanese beetle slipped into New Jersey through the same kind of unregulated plant imports and became one of the most destructive agricultural pest in the country. Both were ecological disasters born from the exact same behavior. Their full stories are for another day, but they underline the same point. This wasn't a one-time accident. It was a pattern of people playing with nature while assuming nothing bad would happen.

[00:35:20]And how many times do these mistakes have to be made before eventually people learn?

[00:35:28]>> I think a lot.

[00:35:29]>> Or more accurately, not caring if nothing bad would happen. So when that infected chestnut stock first reached New York's parks and estates, the inevitable outcome admittedly feels less like an unforeseeable tragedy and more like the inevitable result of human interference. an interference driven by pride, profit, and the belief that the natural world would never push back, or at the very least, if it did, a lack of concern.

[00:35:53]>> It's It's so It's kind of sad because, well, it's not kind of sad. It's really sad because America already had this, you know, this super tree, their own chestnut tree. And that saying, if it's not broke, don't fix it.

[00:36:11]Why why do you need to introduce a tree that you perceive as being more advantageous, you know, or having more benefits if you if if Oh god, if it just wasn't introduced out of sheer greed, then, you know, those trees would still probably be there.

[00:36:29]>> Fall of the chestnut triggered a cascade of ecological collapse. Its annual nut crop had been a keystone resource for countless species. Without it, populations of squirrels, deer, and bears plummeted. Seven species of moths went extinct because their larvae fed exclusively on chestnut leaves. Birds that nested in the cavities of old growth trees lost their homes. Rivers suffered because their nutrient-rich leaves had fed aquatic insects, which in turn nourished fish. In the early days of ecological science, no one fully understood how tightly bound those strands were. And economically, the loss was catastrophic. Lumberm mills and railroads had built their fortunes on chestnuts. Families who had relied on selling nuts for cash were suddenly cut off. The Great Depression only compounded that misery.

[00:37:15]>> Oh no. Oh my gosh. I hadn't even thought about the consequence of that on the lumber industry because as you know this chap has said he told us earlier that it was a very very prized wood. It was very very valuable.

[00:37:29]Um, oh gosh.

[00:37:32]>> As crazy as it sounds, the treere's disappearance was a social and economic disaster. While dollars can be tracked and counted, it was the cultural impact of this loss that may have been the hardest to quantify. Chestnut festivals disappeared, as did the human behaviors that revolved around harvesting them.

[00:37:49]Songs about chestnuting lost all meaning. Appalachin families who had built everything from fences to furniture from chestnuts watched as an entire component of local industry vanished. Communities had to abandon self-sufficient lifestyles that had lasted for generations. The cradle to grave tree no longer rocked babies and coffins would no longer be built out of the trees wood. The disappearance of chestnuts also created a more subtle grief, the loss of a landscape's personality. Ghost forest are not just visually impactful. They're haunting because they represent a broken promise.

[00:38:23]Where once there were cool, pleasant groves and the whisper of leaves high overhead, there remained only sunlight hammering down on an empty hillside.

[00:38:32]Brittle snags that groaned in the wind.

[00:38:34]People Oh my gosh, they they they are ghostly, aren't they? They're like It's like Well, it is. It's a graveyard of trees, isn't it? I just had another thought as well. So with the decline of the American chestnuts, what was the next sought after wood? What was the next best tree to use for timber lumber?

[00:38:58]Um oak and then like say say if it is oak for example that puts tremendous strain on the um on the sourcing of those trees.

[00:39:13]So, I mean, was that a problem? Does that happen swiftly after this?

[00:39:17]>> People who revisited childhood stomping grounds found the shade gone and the squirrel scarce. They described the space as feeling exposed and untethered, as if the land itself had lost its memory. Streams that had run clear through chestnut leaf litter became muddier and warmer, altering the taste of the water and the composition of aquatic life. The disappearance of chestnuts cascaded through the senses.

[00:39:39]The absence of the nutty aroma in autumn. The missing buzz of bees in summer. The silence where turkeys once clocked. It's in these small absences that the enormity of loss truly becomes real. If the story had ended there, it would have been a tragedy with no hope.

[00:39:54]>> Oh no.

[00:39:55]>> Nature, stubborn and patient, rarely gives up so easily. The roots of the American chestnut often survived the blight and sent up sprouts. While the majority of those shoots succumbed to the disease, some persisted. Every once in a while, a sapling reached a size large enough to flower and set a handful of nuts. Those anomalies became living proof of genetic resilience, and they fueled the dreams of people determined to bring the tree back. So, in the 1980s, the American Chestnut Foundation was founded. Look, if there's one thing you can take away from this channel, it's that there's some sort of foundation or organization for everything. The American Chestnut Foundation embarked on a decadesl long effort to breed blight resistant chestnuts. Their method uses traditional backc crossbreeding. Cross an American chestnut with a Japanese chestnut that carries blight resistance. Then cross the offspring back to pure American stock multiple times, selecting for both resistance and American traits. It's selective tree breeding on steroids. Not literally steroids, just saying that it's a lot. As if it were steroids.

[00:40:56]>> Yeah, come to the 21st cent. But these things take time. It takes years for each generation to mature and produce pollen and nuts. So the timeline stretches across careers and even lifetimes. Trees planted today are the work of researchers who may never see them tower. Patience and persistence are not just virtues, but necessities, a restoration effort that moves at the pace of a forest. Thousands of hybrid trees now grow on the east coast as scientists await the results of their work, hoping for a sign that the strategy is working. Scientists are also using biotechnology to try and preserve the chestnut. One transgenic project inserted a single wheat gene into the American chestnut, producing a line of DNA called Darling 58. This gene allows the tree to detoxify the exalic acid produced by the fungus. Early greenhouse trials looked promising and the American Chestnut Foundation petitioned the USDA to allow Darling 58 saplings to be planted in forest. However, in December of 2023, so only 2 years ago, the American Chestnut Foundation withdrew its petition due to poor performances and high mortality in test plots.

[00:42:02]Restoration, it turns out, is messy.

[00:42:05]Hybrid trees survived in some sites and died in others. Traditionalists like the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation, see this is what I'm talking about. There's another Foundation. Would you look at that? Are trying to breed pure American trees with natural resistance. Once again, progress is slow, but also once again, saplings keep sprouting. Grassroots volunteers hike into remote hills to find wild sprouts, pollinate them by hand, and record their DNA. Every living chestnut becomes a potential parent. In places like Virginia's Jefferson National Forest and Pennsylvania's Flight 93 National Memorial, young hybrids now grow. They aren't the towering giants of old just yet, but they're alive. They bloom. They have nuts. The dream is to see the chestnut saplings once again pierce the canopy and for squirrels to travel branchto branch across the states.

[00:42:54]Restoration efforts are relying heavily on volunteers. Many of these are descendants of Appalachin families who remember chestnut stories from grandparents or have old photographs of family members posing beside huge trunks. Others are botnist driven by the desire to correct a historical wrong.

[00:43:11]They organize seed distribution drives, tend demonstration orchards at schools, and hold public events where children can see and touch young chestnuts, something that for many generations they would only have heard stories of. Those working towards this mission know that most of the saplings they plant will die or be cut down in calling experiments.

[00:43:29]Yet, they persist. In community meetings, those from older generations share recipes for chestnut bread and talk about the flavor of roasted nuts that young listeners have never tasted.

[00:43:39]This intergenerational storytelling turns restoration into a cultural project as much as a biological one where science meets ritual. The Chestnut story isn't just a botanical curiosity.

[00:43:51]It's a cautionary tale about some of the drawbacks of globalization and the unintended consequences of human actions. When Robert Fortune smuggled tea out of China, he changed world economies. When nursery men imported Japanese chestnuts, they imported a pathogen that wiped out a foundational species. We like to convince ourselves that we have control over nature, that what we change is always good, that we can put things into the boxes we want them to go into. The chestnut reminds us that just a single oversight can unravel entire ecosystems, and that meddling natural affairs usually comes with complications we couldn't have possibly accounted for. In response to the plague, the 1912 plant quarantine act was passed. It was one of the first federal responses to this disaster and it laid the groundwork for modern biocurity laws. Today, import inspections and quarantine procedures owe their existence to tragedies like the chestnuts collapse. Modern global trade moves plants, animals, and microbes around the world at unprecedented speed. And each shipment has the potential to carry invasive species or diseases. Prevention and regulation are essential because once a pathogen escapes, it may be impossible to contain. Countries and states like Australia and Hawaii understand these concepts well. If you've ever traveled to either, you've had to fill out forms and gone through security that wants to ensure you aren't importing anything that could upset the local ecology. The chestnuts demise also teaches us a lesson on the illusion of abundance. 4 billion chestnut trees probably felt like a supply that would never run out.

[00:45:21]They were everywhere, part of the fabric of American society. The extent to which the tree could be found made it easy to take for granted. Yet in less than half a century, a microscopic organism and a few human decisions erase that abundance entirely. The chestnut's fall is a reminder that natural wealth can vanish quickly when checks and balances are ignored. Harvard researchers have regarded the blight-driven collapse of the chestnut as they have the slaughter of bison and the extinction of the passenger pigeon, which to be clear is not the rock pigeon, also known as carrier pigeons that we covered in a previous video. as one of the three iconic examples of how North American ecology was reshaped by human activity.

[00:46:01]Those three tragedies helped inspire the modern environmental movement and new conservational efforts. But to me, the most heartbreaking aspect of the chestnut story is the loss of cultural memory that comes along with it.

[00:46:12]Children who grew up collecting nuts by lantern line had to explain to their grandchildren why the groves were gone.

[00:46:18]Songs about chestnuting became curiosities. Poems and stories lost their grounding and lived experience. I think it's the saddest thing is just how interwoven the chestnut trees and the chestnuts were into everyday life for so many people. It's it's it's just had a devastating impact on generations of cultures and it's so sad.

[00:46:45]also as well the the u devastation on on on the different species of animals.

[00:46:55]How many species of moths did he say?

[00:46:59]Because the lava um like exclusively fed on the chestnuts and it just wiped out entire species.

[00:47:08]It's so so sad. It's it's absolutely mind-blowing the effect that just the like the dev devastation of one species of tree can have across the entire continent. It's really really sad.

[00:47:24]>> The redwood of the east became a ghost.

[00:47:26]>> Yeah.

[00:47:27]>> When we talk about ghost forest, we don't just mean stands of dead trees. We mean the haunting absence of a living connection. Trees are alive. When billions of them are wiped out in a few decades, it's hard for the woods to not feel haunted. There's also a thread of hope woven through the narrative. The chestnut's roots still survived and still sent up shoots. Volunteers and scientists keep fighting the good fight, whether through careful back crossing, genetic engineering, or pure breeding.

[00:47:54]There's a real possibility that chestnuts will once again grow tall in Appalachia. And that hope carries a responsibility. Restoration is not about recreating the past exactly as it was.

[00:48:04]It's about learning from mistakes and forging a relationship with nature based on humility and respect. The chestnut teaches us that working with and alongside nature requires patience, caution, and a willingness to accept limits. If we succeed in bringing chestnuts back, we must do so in a way that honors their place in the ecosystem rather than simply exploiting them again. We're trying to put something back that was supposed to be there and we took away. We're not making another novelty. So this winter as we sat by the fire and listen to Nat King Cole or Mel Torm crrew about roasting chestnuts I hope we think about the origins of that tune. Interesting enough Mel actually wrote the iconic lyrics in the middle of a Los Angeles heatwave in 1945. While we probably think of the song as a commentary on a time that we feel nostalgic for. The truth is even then he was longing for a plant that was already vanished. The song now serves as both a prayer and a eulogy. Remembering what we once had and hoping it returns. So the next time that melody plays, don't picture the hot weather that rolled over the West Coast as he pinned the lyrics.

[00:49:06]I don't even want you to picture the cozy traditional holiday scene it paints. I want you to picture Appalachin ridges draped in blossoms, families camping under starving in yellow clouds, and Cherokee elders chestnut time. Or if you want, imagine a botist disguised in Chinese robes sneaking a sapling onto a British steamer. See the haunting image of ghost forest. Rows of white skeletons reaching up like begging hands. And then imagine just beyond the horizon, a young chestnut sprout with a fungus fighting gene stretching for sunlight. Maybe a future. Because somewhere in the mountains, a chestnut burr may one day split open again and spill its treasure onto the forest floor. And maybe when it does, children and families will race through crunchy leaves to gather nuts they've only heard about in an old Christmas song. I would understand if you're approaching this topic for the first time, you may think, "What's the point?" I think everyone could agree that when it comes to introducing a new disease to the US that killed off a bunch of trees, we probably shouldn't have done that. But we're still here.

[00:50:06]Most of the trees are still there. Who cares, right? Well, at least the reason I care and I think people should care goes back to what I was saying earlier.

[00:50:14]This used to be a way of life for so many people. My grandfather was just a boy when the last chestnuts died across the mountains. But even from him, you could feel the passion of a bygone era.

[00:50:25]Old bags of chestnuts had the agency of an aged wine. Axe handles and whistles carved from chestnut wood became ancient antiques. There was something there for so many people. And then it was gone.

[00:50:36]And it was gone because we thought we could do better. We thought we could put it in a box and commodify it and pass it off in a way that suited us. Those who are here from Windagon will probably hear this story and think it has a lot of similarities to how we dealt with kudzu. That was also a plant from China that was brought in to help agriculture and then killed a bunch of stuff. And I never want to be in a place where I take for granted the steps that were made so that I can take the steps I'm taking now. That way of life brought culture and economy to a region I live in, but to people I've never met. And those people built the foundations of the roads, the cities, and the communities that I benefit from now. But because of one little mistake, something that was so indicative of them and so indicative of the wildlife and nature around them was gone. And to me, there is something so gripping, something so important about getting a second chance. And that second chance comes from a dedication we didn't have when this happened the first time. The people that brought these things over wanted fame and a quick buck. And they very quickly destroyed thousands of years of progress across the forest of the East Coast. And now the efforts that were seen in the current year to bring the chestnut back, those efforts were began by people long since passed. People back in the 40s when the final plants were dying who decided to take the saplings and try again. My friend has this piece of property where we go out and camp and hike. And there's this nice flat open area we hang out in that doesn't have a lot of shade. So a while back we decided to plant some trees. These trees will take 40, 50 years to reach their maturity. I'll probably never sit in the shade of them, but my kids will. And I don't say that as some point of heroism or applause for myself. I say that as someone who spent his entire life in the shade. Every tree I sit under was planted by someone who wasn't around to see it. And there's something so heartwarming to me to think that maybe my grandchildren or great grandchildren will get to sit under the shade of a chestnut tree. And then maybe they just like family members of theirs generations back they couldn't even list will look up at the tree and say the same thing they did when they were their age. Wow, that's a big tree. Growing up in Appalachia and Appalachin churches, I would always hear it phrased that we are to be stewards of the earth. And I think stewardship is perfect way to look at it. We don't own the world. It's not ours to do whatever we want whenever we tell it to. But we are supposed to take care of it. And it's so easy for things to get out of place when we act like we own it. It's always heartwarming to me, especially when it's at home, to see people who act like they care. And hopefully you care about the American chestnut at least a little bit. And above all else, thank you for watching.

[00:53:16]If I have an excuse to talk about a weird plant incident thing in Appalachia that ties into like kind of the poeticism and resilience of the region, I'm going to do it. This is the second time this has happened now. I promise you, it will not be the last. I hope all of you had a very merry Christmas and I hope that you have a happy new year. We really kicked this channel off this year and your all support has been incredible. We've been able to grow the team. We've been able to plan out more stuff for 2026. I'm really glad you guys enjoy it and I hope that you continue to enjoy it as we try to do more cool things for you all. Not to get sappy about the whole YouTube thing after I just got sappy about trees, but really you guys have made my life a miracle.

[00:53:54]God proves himself continuously through the people he puts in my life. That includes you guys. So now I will completely diminish that goodwill by once again inserting a YouTube plug. The redacted collection again is available at the link in the description at windon.shop. Get it while you can.

[00:54:09]Everyone who made this video possible will be credited in the descriptions. Be sure to show them some love. And I believe that should do it for now. But before I go, I just want to say thank you for watching. We hope that you enjoyed and we'll see you in the next one. Bye >> bye.

[00:54:26]Wendy goon and I kind of apologize.

[00:54:29]>> Also, I want you guys to know that Randall, the guy that reviews these scripts, put so many jokes in about nut or the word nut or nuts.

[00:54:39]>> Uh, and I didn't bring them up because I was like getting emotional and serious, but I want you to know I had to keep the poker face up through so many nut jokes.

[00:54:51]So, I hope you appreciate that.

[00:54:54]every >> I mean, yes, but I do appreciate a good dad joke. I want I wanted to hear the nut jokes. Do you see what he did at the end there when he said he got a bit sappy?

[00:55:09]I love them.

[00:55:13]Oh my gosh, I'm so right. Someone please tell tell tell me what this chap's name is please so I don't have to keep referring to him as this chap or the narrator but yes he um he mentioned I was just about to start talking about it it's stewardship it's the principle of stewardship and whether you feel that this is our duty for you know religious reasons for you know your Christian duty or whichever religion or just just morally I I think it is our responsibility and if anything for any other reason it's just to preserve you know the abundance of nature the life that we have the world that we live in it's just to preserve that for the next generation and that that's enough that's enough of a reason to take stewardship seriously I feel a little bit conflicted because I feel a little bit like this awful thing that happened I wouldn't say it started with pure intentions because I do feel like you know and we've spoke he spoke about it earlier uh is this happened through greed and you know desire of money wealth vanity um but I do think that you know there was an ignorance of pathogens or the potential for this absolute catastrophe to happen And we know better now as you know with with many things you know with age wisdom we know better. Do I think knowing about the pathogens the the the fungi would have stopped them from importing the Japanese chestnuts?

[00:56:59]Probably not. No. Do I think if they thought it would wipe out the American chestnut and have such a devastating impact on so many different cultures and the lives of so many local people? Um I yeah I think that would have made them stop and reconsider if they us with our 21st century eyes and brains it's easy to look back and make comments like that isn't it? But it's so so sad especially with the you know all the species that were devastated that were that became extinct ex actually extinct never mind reduced numbers or endangered some some species of moths I think it was wasn't it became extinct that's crazy I like the I like the story the resilience of of the roots It's, you know, creating the the saplings that hopefully do have the genetic resistance there. It's that good old American resilience. I like it. It's quite symbolic. So hopefully, I know it takes a long time for them to mature and this is very much a bit of a waiting game, isn't it? But I really do hope they're able to recreate genet a genetically strong breed of the American chestnut that hopefully will reproduce in abundance and you know cover the landscapes of the US once again. That would be lovely. Anyway, guys, I did think in the first place when I saw this title, The Chestnut Massacre, I thought it was talking about an element of a war or a battle. I didn't think it was actually going to be chestnut.

[00:58:55]Bit of a shocker there. Thank you so much, Bill, for requesting this video.

[00:59:00]Very, very interesting. I had no idea. I didn't even know that there was a separate species of chestnut. I I suppose the one that we have here in the UK is just like a European chestnut.

[00:59:12]Uh I I didn't even know it was a thing.

[00:59:14]I didn't know that it's virtually, you know, almost extinct. It's heavily endangered, isn't it? Now, uh the American chestnut, I had no idea. Don't you learn something new every day? So, thank you for requesting that video again. Very, very interesting. Guys, it's been a bit of a long video. I hope you're still with me. If you are, thank you for watching, my lovelies. Take care of yourselves and I will see you next time.