There are quite   a few American Chestnut trees growing around the North East   
and upper mid-West.   My experience growing up on a farm in Eastern Ohio in the 
  
50's and 60's was that the trees would grow until they had yielded nuts a couple
 of years and then die from the blight.   At that stage they would be 6 -   

8 inches in diameter at the base and maybe 30 feet tall.   Very occasionally one
 would live past that.   Smithsonian magazine had an article on the effort to   
regenerate them a few years ago.   
I harvested one of the larger dead ones on the home farm in the 80's and made a 
Shaker wall clock from it.   Wood looks great.   Grain reminds you of white oak 
  
a little.   Works like stringy butternut.   Has a bad tendency to dent easily bu
t   takes a finish very well. 
      George

---------------------- Forwarded by George Wallace/MJT Inc. on 03/01/97 04:42 PM
 
---------------------------

	MIME:john @ GUNTERMAN.MV.COM
	03/01/97 03:06 PM
To: -:ironmger @ northnet.org@INTERNET, -:oldtools @ 
listserv.law.cornell.edu@INTERNET, George Wallace
cc:  
Subject: Re: Bio: Joe Dolinar
Much deleted (and spell checked, John :-)
At 10:30 AM -0500 3/1/97, ironmger@n... wrote:

I _KNOW_ of _ONE_ Chestnut still standing and thriving. It is in a town called R
iverside, RI. (that is near the ocean, Jeff) the tree is doing quite well, thank
 you very much the tree is examined ever year by some tree-hugger group, I want 
to say it is the National Audobon Society, but that is probably wrong......

Anyway, back in 1984, I was looking at some squirrels up in the tree (actually s
ighting one up in my sling-shot) I noticed a chestnut on a branch. I asked "B" (
that's what we all called him) about it, he looked at it and walked into the hou
se and called that tree hugger group. the next day they were there taking pictur
e of the pod, etc. a few months later they sent someone out there to "harvest" t
hat nut.

I came to find out that that they wanted it to do some genetic testing on it to 
find out why this tree was immune to the disease that killed all the others and 
to try to propagate and clone it! I dunno if hey were successful or not.

Okay lots of line to say:   they IS an American-Chestnut Tree alive in the US. a
nd by now, probably a whole farm of them growing in irradiated hydoponic chemica
l soup under the careful guard of agents Scully and Moulder (we can only hope!)

 Planed like poplar, had a consistency of oak and was about as dense as maple. 

I truly envy you!

L8r, 
John