Notes from Chestnut Talk at Mountain Lakes

Sandy Anaganostakis of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station came to town with 20 American chestnut trees with bred resistance to the devastating disease, chestnut blight. The trees have since been planted by volunteers, led by Bill Sachs, in local parks and preserves. For those who missed the talk Sandy gave at Mountain Lakes House during her visit, here are some notes:

Sandy has been studying American chestnut blight since 1968--a passion that shows no sign of flagging. While devoting her life to bringing back the American chestnut as a timber tree, she loves all types of chestnuts--American, Japanese, Chinese, European, and the closely related chinquapins.

She began by taking us back 13,000 years, to the end of the last ice age, when the American chestnut was likely limited to a small area in what is now Tennessee. As the glaciers receded, the chestnut spread across the east.

American chestnut was the perfect timber tree. It grew straight and tall, and was highly resistant to rot. It was the main wood used for telephone poles and fencing in the east. Chestnut was the quickest to regrow after a virgin forest was cut down. Shading out other species, it became the dominant tree in second growth forests.

The first imported disease affecting American chestnuts was not chestnut blight but something called Ink disease, which hitchhiked over from Portugal on cork trees around 1824. It's a deadly disease, but can't survive the colder winters of the northern U.S.

Chestnut blight likely came to this continent around 1876, when Japanese chestnuts began being imported. It spread quickly through the eastern U.S. In Connecticut, Sandy's home state, it spread statewide in just four years, from 1908 to 1912. The blight essentially stripped American forests of the chestnut tree, but did not kill the roots. The species literally "went underground", sending up shoots that would grow for some years before being infected by the fungus. One can still find this sort of sprouting in the woods.

The disease later spread to Europe, arriving in Italy in 1938. In 1951, a European scientist discovered that some chestnuts in Italy were showing a different reaction to fungus, exhibiting swollen cankers. Trees with this sort of canker were able to grow despite the presence of the blight.

When Sandy heard about this less virulent strain in 1973, she contacted the scientist and helped identify the virus that was causing the reduced virulence. This was a particularly important discovery because the virus can be applied to American chestnuts to reduce the impact of the blight fungus.

Sandy's approach to reintroducing the American chestnut is not to plant whole forests with resistant varieties, but instead to preserve the genetic diversity by planting a few specimens with bred resistance into an area where there are remnant populations of the pure native species. By treating the non-resistant pure natives with the virus that reduces the disease's virulence, a mix of bred and pure species can survive and cross-pollinate.

I asked about the potential for identifying the gene in asian chestnut species that makes them resistant to the fungus, and then inserting that gene into American chestnuts. She said researchers have found three genes associated with resistance, which makes genetic modification more difficult. It's her experience that the traditional method of breeding resistance is actually faster than doing genetic modification in the lab, and will yield better results. The added benefit is that she gets to work outside, rather than in a lab.

As if the introduced diseases were not enough of a handicap on the American chestnut, someone smuggled plant material into the U.S. in 1974 that included an exotic insect called the chestnut gall wasp. The wasp spread through Georgia, got accidentally transported to Cleveland, Ohio, and is now heading towards the northeast from those two directions. Though there are parasites that prey on the wasp, Sandy is worried about its potential impact on efforts to restore the American chestnut to the eastern forest.

The fungus that causes chestnut blight infects oaks and eucalyptus as well.

Bill Sachs tells me the chestnuts we can buy for eating come mostly from Italy. The American chestnut is smaller but sweeter. Sandy mentioned the "Sleeping Giant" variety that makes particularly good nuts for eating, and is partly American.

Native Chestnuts in Princeton--the Next Generation

Many of us have lived our whole lives without seeing a mature native American chestnut tree. An excellent NY Times Magazine article described it as a true gift of nature, the perfect tree, growing straight and tall, with rot-resistant wood, and bearing nuts that were easily gathered and eaten, sustaining wildlife and people alike. My first encounter with the American chestnut was the sight of their fallen trunks in a Massachusetts forest, 70 years after the fungus that causes chestnut blight was discovered in NY city in 1904. The massive trunks I saw, lying on a slope in the shade of young white pine, were among the billions that the accidentally imported fungus would ultimately kill in the U.S. Since the roots survive the fungus, there was still a living community of underground chestnut trees beneath our feet in that Massachusetts forest. One of the roots had sent up a sprout about twenty feet tall--promising, one would like to think, but its slim trunk was already ringed by the fungus, its fate sealed before it could bear nuts. 

One of the projects I'm involved in is reintroducing native chestnuts to Princeton. The initiative began in 2009 with an email from Bill Sachs, a Princetonian with considerable expertise when it comes to nut-bearing trees. Bill reported that Sandra Anagnostakis, "one of (if not the) world’s leading experts on the pathology of American chestnut," had agreed to supply us with disease-resistant, hybrid American chestnut trees. Sandra's efforts to breed resistant native chestnuts at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station over many decades was apparently unconnected to the American Chestnut Foundation. The trees were 15/16th native, and Bill with occasional help from me and others proceeded to plant them at the Princeton Battlefield, Harrison Street Park, the Textile Research Institute, Mountain Lakes and Herrontown Woods. 

Some fared better than others. Many, despite having been bred for resistance, nonetheless struggled with the blight that had laid the mighty tree low a century ago. This fall, however, paralleling our work to bring back native butternuts, one of the chestnut trees has borne fertile seeds.  

Bill made repeat visits to the tree to collect the nuts as they ripened. The deer likely got many, but he managed to gather quite a few, some of which he encouraged me to cold stratify. Stratification has always been an intimidating concept for me, suggesting sophisticated manipulation to get a seed to germinate, but in this case it turned out to be not much more than stuffing some seeds in a bag of moist peat moss and leaving it in the back of the refrigerator for awhile. 

The tree, hosted by TRI near Carnegie Lake in eastern Princeton, bore generously despite significant pruning by the periodical cicadas early in the growing season. 

This past summer a friend had sent me a photo of another chestnut tree that, being smaller, was much more affected by the cicadas' egg-laying activities. They cut into stems to lay their eggs, which ends up killing the foot or two of stem beyond where the eggs are deposited. 

We'll see how these various trees do over time, and if a second generation of these mostly native chestnuts comes into being. The NY Times article was mostly about efforts to develop a blight-resistant American chestnut through genetic modification. That thirty year project, with a geneticist named William Powell as the main protagonist, has been successful. They managed to find a gene in wheat that confers resistance when inserted into the chestnut's genome. 

Adding one gene would seem a much more precise and less intrusive means of correcting a century old wrong than adding many genes, most of which are irrelevant to improving resistance, from asian chestnuts. But don't expect these ever so slightly and efficiently modified native chestnuts to be available any time soon. There are strict regulatory hurdles that must be overcome. 

For me, the situation demonstrates two powerful forces in the human world. One is the fear of the slippery slope. Would an elegant genetic fix for the American chestnut open the doors to a wave of less admirable genetic modifications of our world? The other powerful force is our focus on regulating intentional change, while allowing unintentional change to run rampant. While the government spends years deliberating over one gene being added to the native chestnut tree, global trade is introducing an ongoing wave of new organisms to the country, any one of which could be the next emerald ash borer or spotted lanternfly. 

In the meantime, we'll be thankful for the mostly native chestnuts we have, and see what we can grow.

Below is more info I've taken from some of Bill Sachs' emails. Click on Read More. 

The American Chestnut Returns To Princeton

There's an extraordinary story to tell about the American chestnut. Most of us have never seen one, but they were once a dominant tree in the eastern forest.

Next month, Friends of Princeton Open Space will host a talk on the return of the great American Chestnut to the landscape. Sandra Anagnostakis, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, will describe her decades-long work to bring the native chestnut back from near extinction. The talk will be at Mountain Lakes House on Thursday, May 6, at 7pm.

Through a collaborative effort with Bill Sachs, local expert on nut-bearing trees who is spearheading a number of local projects, Sandra will also be bringing twenty native American Chestnut seedlings for planting in local parks and preserves. Once a main constituent of the eastern forest, the American chestnut was nearly wiped out by chestnut blight fungus, which was introduced into the U.S. in the early 1900s via either lumber or chestnut trees imported from Asia.

To give a sense of what was lost, here's a passage from Wikipedia: "Mature trees often grew straight and branch-free for 50 feet (sometimes up to one hundred feet), could grow to be 200 feet tall with a trunk diameter of 14 feet at a few feet above ground level. For three centuries most barns and homes east of the Mississippi were made from American Chestnut."

The exotic fungus, which kills the above-ground portion of the tree but not the root, caused this most important of eastern American trees to literally "go underground." Surviving roots still send up sprouts, which survive until they reach nut-bearing age, at which point the fungus again intervenes. Though the chestnut was nearly wiped out by 1950, the rot-resistant, fallen trunks of the trees were still a common site when I was working in the Massachusetts woods in the mid-70s.

The trees Sandra will be bringing are 15/16th American, 1/16th Japanese. Her experimental work to restore the American chestnut to the Connecticut landscape uses a combination of disease-resistant hybrid seedlings and inoculation of existing native sprouts with the virus that transforms the blight pathogen to a less virulent form.

One blight-resistant American chestnut, developed by another breeder, was planted some years ago at D&R Greenway by local arborist Bob Wells.

It's worth noting that the devastation caused by the unregulated international trade in plants and lumber, of which chestnuts and elms are two particularly dramatic examples, continues unabated. In Princeton, we will over the next decade likely witness a dieoff approaching the scale of the chestnut and elm dieoffs of the 20th century, as the emerald ash borer, which hitch-hiked to Michigan from Asia in wooden packing crates, continues its spread eastward. There will, in other words, be a lot of gaps in the canopy for the chestnut to claim, if its return is successful.

Update on Native Butternuts and Chestnuts in Princeton

There's a lot of gratitude being expressed towards trees these days. The gratitude tends to be towards trees in general, but this fall, I'm especially grateful for three trees in particular. 

All three, growing at the TRI property, are among many that have been planted over the years by local nut tree expert Bill Sachs and me as part of an effort to bring back two marginalized native tree species. One is an American chestnut. The other two are butternuts. Both of these species have been laid low by introduced diseases, and I feel fortunate to be part of an effort to make them numerous once again in Princeton. 

The two butternuts at TRI bore a bumper crop this year, some 200 nuts--the first sizable harvest since the parents to these two trees were lost 14 years ago. One fell in a storm; the other ironically was cut down as part of an environmental remediation. It's Bill who played the role of Noah, growing new seedlings from the seeds we collected from the two trees before they were lost.

We planted other members of this new generation of locally sourced native butternut trees at Harrison Street Park, Herrontown Woods, Mountain Lakes, and Stone Hill Church. Bill in particular did a lot of the followup work, checking the cages that protected them from the deer, and serving as a one man bucket brigade to sustain the trees through droughts in their first couple years.

Bill also did a great deal of work to re-establish native chestnut trees in Princeton. That project began in 2010, when chestnut researcher Sandra Anagnostakis, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station came to town to give a talk. She brought along 20 chestnut seedlings for us to plant in local parks. The seedlings were 15/16th native, 1/16th Japanese chestnut. Of all of those that Bill planted, at the Princeton Battlefield, TRI, Herrontown Woods, and Harrison Street Park, only the one tree at TRI has borne fruit. Many of the hybrid trees have died, despite the effort to breed in resistance. 

There have been some other efforts to get the American chestnut growing again in Princeton, by the Friends of Princeton Open Space at Mountain Lakes and also by arborist Bob Wells at Greenway Meadows. The best bet for repopulating our world with the American chestnut may well lie in research that led to inserting a gene from wheat into the American chestnut genome that confers resistance. This seems a much more dependable and faster way to embed resistance to the fungus, and bring back this spectacularly useful native tree. 

In the meantime, we can celebrate the hard-won harvest we're getting from this new generation of native nut trees, and after letting them cure a bit will even get to find out what a butternut tastes like.

Related posts

From 2021: Butternut Redux--A New Generation Bears its First Crop

From 2010: The American Chestnut Returns to Princeton

Quiet Botanical Battles Staged at Princeton Battlefield

July 19, and it's a quiet scene at the Princeton Battlefield on a weekday afternoon. The Mercer Oak is looking robust in its corral of sacred ground. The immense lawn is getting mowed.

The flag in the distance is at half mast, but I don't suppose it has anything to do with the quiet botanical battles going on.

American chestnut, sacked by an imported sac fungus 100 years ago, has been making a slow comeback thanks to breeders who have been patiently breeding native trees with resistance. Four of these hybrids (15/16th native, 1/16 Japanese chestnut) were planted at the Battlefield two years ago by local nut tree specialist Bill Sachs.

He said their chances of being resistant to the fungus are about 50/50, and as it turns out two of the trees have developed the symptoms of chestnut blight.

Here's what the stem with the canker looks like. (Thanks to Bill for these two photos.)

The two others continue to prosper, and have grown to 12 feet tall. That they are growing near infected trees gives some hope that they will prove to have inherited resistance.

Several mature non-native chestnuts grow near the Clark House. The shiny leaf on the right is likely a Chinese chestnut, compared to the duller surface of the native species.

Flipped over, the Chinese chestnut leaf has a silvery tinge.

Another battle is going on where two flowering dogwood trees grow along woods' edge to the left of the pillars. If they haven't flowered as profusely in recent years, it may be because they are being completely overwhelmed by what I call "the kudzu of the north", porcelain berry.

Judging from this one small branch reaching out from the thronging vines, like a hand pleading for help, the dogwoods are not far from a full surrender.

Another dogwood close by is getting overwhelmed by wild grape.

Three beautiful dogwoods could be saved by five minutes of horticultural heroism with a pair of loppers, but I doubt anyone has even noticed this botanical battle in full swing. We see here a theme reenacted endlessly on our public lands. The voluminous grass gets mowed, some weeds get whipped, but any maintenance task requiring plant knowledge is left to chance.

A fuller story of chestnuts in Princeton can be found by searching this blog for "chestnut", or clicking on this: http://princetonnaturenotes.blogspot.com/search?q=chestnut.

Managing Princeton's Open Space--a Nature Conservancy Model

A newsletter from the Pennsylvania chapter of the Nature Conservancy came in the mail. Did I send them money? Who knows. All sorts of newsletters keep coming, and sometimes they get read.

A case study on their recently acquired 640 Brush Mountain Preserve caught my eye. Princeton has similarly substantial preserved lands. The title was "Managing Forest Resources for People and Nature". Note that they put people before nature in the title. One of the higher ups at the Nature Conservancy spoke at Princeton University not long ago, and said they had found that their message went over much better if they emphasize people rather than such aspects as biological diversity.

In addition to emphasizing benefits to people by referring to forests and water as resources, they also call for active management: "The Conservancy is actively working ... to conserve forest and freshwater resources to benefit people and nature. Sustainable forest management is a key strategy to accomplish this goal." If sustainable forest management is a key strategy, what form might it take in Princeton's preserves?

This reciprocal relationship, in which nature sustains people and people help sustain nature, is particularly important given today's realities, when multiple negative human impacts are making nature less self-sustaining. "Protected areas require active management to maintain their natural resiliency--their ability to adapt to changing conditions and rebound from stressors." The stressors, except for the overabundance of deer, remain unidentified. Terms that set some people off, like climate change or invasive species, become "changing conditions" and "competing vegetation". Biodiversity is expressed through the word "resiliency".

Here are their four steps for active management:

1. Increase light reaching the forest floor by controlling competing vegetation and reintroducing prescribed fire. (The non-native shrubs crowding Princeton's forest understory leaf out early in the spring, depriving the spring ephemeral wildflowers of the sunlight they need to store up energy for the next spring. Prescribed fire is an elegant way to open up the understory without killing the larger trees. In Princeton, we're doing some limited invasive species control, and there was an accidental but beneficial woodland fire at Mountain Lakes a couple years ago. Here's a post on prescribed burning being used elsewhere in NJ.)
2. Protect priority seedlings by installing deer fencing and controlling deer population. (Deer eat native tree seedlings. Too many deer equals no forest regeneration. Princeton gets high marks for its deer control program instituted back in 2000. Some small sections of Mountain Lakes now are protected by deer fencing.)
3. Plant as needed--for those species that face more extreme challenges. (American chestnut and butternut are two tree species that have been made rare in Princeton's forests, and need an assist to return. We've been actively growing and reintroducing these species on a small but meaningful scale.)
4. Record and share results. (Always a nice sentiment, sometimes acted upon.)

The Conservancy's goal is to shift forest composition over time, and they use a very effective graphic to show the change they are aiming for, using the size of font to represent which species would be more prevalent:

For example, the composition in 2010, Chestnut Oak, Scarlet Oak, Pitch Pine, White Pine, Birch, Red Maple, and Striped Maple, 

would become in 2050 Chestnut Oak, Red Oak, Scarlet Oak, Black Oak, Pitch Pine, White Pine, Birch, Black Cherry, Red Maple, and American Chestnut.

The Nature Conservancy has multiple partners helping to inform this sustainable management: among them Audubon, the American Chestnut Foundation, the Pinchot Institute, universities and the state game commission. 

Looks like a useful model for when Princeton takes on active management to complement the acquisition of open space lands.

Native Azaleas Bloom Again at Herrontown Woods

This spring, Herrontown Woods had its first big show of native azalea blooms in many decades. They were all on one bush, but it was a start. I counted the blossoms--25, which is 22 more than the grand total from five years ago. A friend who grew up in Princeton told me that wild azaleas had once been a common sight in spring. What caused them to disappear? The answer is more deer and more shade. 

The pinxter azaleas are not the only species that has languished in the deep shade of the forest. Shadbush and hearts-a-bustin' have also been marginalized. It took some years of exploration to realize that they were still there, surviving in a miniature state, a foot or two tall, deprived of sunlight, nibbled down by deer. 

One of the first to be spotted, during a morning walk five years back, was a spindly pinxter azalea that had somehow managed to grow three flowers, like a weak SOS signal coming from a distressed ship. When the shrub failed to bloom at all the following year, I responded by digging a small sideshoot from the base and planting it in the preserve's Botanical Art Garden, where we maintain the equivalent of a forest opening. Bathed in sunlight and protected from deer browse, the azalea has thrived in a way it never could beneath dense trees.

Growing next to the azalea in the botanical garden is a shadbush, so named because it blooms when the shad are migrating up rivers in early spring to spawn. It, too, is finally getting an opportunity to grow to maturity for the first time in decades. 

Another species seldom encountered along the Princeton Ridge--only two have been found in Herrontown Woods thus far--is the pagoda dogwood. It's alternate leaves (arising not in pairs but instead singly on alternating sides of the stem) give it another common name, alternate-leaved dogwood, and also its latin name, Cornus alternifolia. The flowers aren't that showy--pompom-like clusters reminiscent of the more common silky dogwood--but the pagoda-like shape of the branches is striking. Hopefully we'll be able to witness that as this one grows up in a sunnier location than is available among the dense trees of the woods.

Other size-disadvantaged woody species being brought into the botanical garden to get out of the shade and deer browse are hazelnut, persimmon, and hearts-a-bustin'.

A native chestnut tree is also checking out its new home in the botanical art garden. The chestnut has been disadvantaged in today's forested preserves not by limited size but by the lingering chestnut blight disease that nearly eliminated them from the continent a century ago. This one is 15/16th native, crossed with an asian species that hopefully conferred immunity. Unlike the other woody plants mentioned in this post, the planted chestnut is not a local genotype.

In the early days of the Herrontown Woods preserve, there was a chestnut tree still growing along the yellow trail. The blight doesn't affect the roots, so it essentially sent the species "underground." Chestnuts persisted to some extent by sending up suckers that would grow to ten or twenty feet before succumbing to the fungus, at which point yet another sucker would be generated, to meet the same fate. Eventually, I suppose, the roots ran out of energy to keep sending up suckers.

Butternut, too, has been laid low more by introduced disease than by size limitations, and will be getting a home in the botanical garden. 

Add to these woody species all the sun-loving wildflowers that have an even harder time surviving in our tree-dominated preserves, and it becomes clear that what we have created at Herrontown Woods is a place where disadvantaged native species can have a chance to show their stuff. This opportunity for upward mobility was once built into natural systems, back when megafauna and fire served to set back the trees, when deer were kept in check by predators, and long before invasive species stifled with their overwhelming growth. We love our trees. For many people, trees are a symbol of nature itself, and yet it's important to remember that the less lofty species are also part of nature, and have as much claim as large trees to a place in our preserves. Thus, "plant a tree", for all its resonance and popular appeal, is more relevant to our streets than our preserves when it comes to actions we can take to heal nature and nurture diversity.

Four additional native azaleas were added to the Botanical Art Garden last year, rescued from deep latency and finally given a chance to grow. In time, they could make for a really big show, and it all started with a floral SOS along a trail. 

Hybridized Time and Plants Meet at the Battlefield

Under the spreading hican tree (a grafting of a hickory/pecan hybrid to the rootstock of a hickory), John Mills hybridized past and present at his annual reading of the Declaration of Independence. The reading, along with some shootings of cannons and cooking of colonial foods, took place as they always do on July 4 at Princeton Battlefield. Soldiers explained the difference between a musket and a rifle, and said the rifles' better accuracy made it possible for the colonists to pick off British officers--something the British took as a breach of their gentlemanly rules of warfare.

The battlefield grounds now have a few new hybrids--four young chestnut trees that are 15/16th American Chestnut and 1/16th Japanese. The trees have three things going for them: a sunny spot to grow, the t.l.c. of Princetonian Bill Sachs, who planted them and is now keeping them watered through the extended drought, and immunity from Chestnut Blight that the Japanese portion of their genetic makeup will hopefully confer. The trees are part of a larger effort to reintroduce native chestnuts into the American landscape.

(You can read more about American chestnut tree reintroductions in Princeton by typing "chestnut" into the search box at the upper left hand corner of this blog.

Being a promoter of habitat for wildlife, I was a bit chagrined to see that the battlefield meadow (back left in the photo), which is normally allowed to grow through the summer, has been mowed down. A long-range goal of the Friends of the battlefield is to restore a more authentic landscape, which would likely mean replacing some of the mowed grass with orchards and meadows.

American Chestnut Talk this Thursday, 7pm

A reminder about the talk this coming Thursday, hosted by Friends of Princeton Open Space at Mountain Lakes House, about efforts to bring back the great American Chestnut tree. The talk is free, and refreshments will be served beginning at 6:30.

Below is some detailed background information, provided by Bill Sachs, who lives in Princeton and edits the Northern Nutgrowers Association newsletter.

Abstract. Native chestnut trees have suffered from two
disastrous imported diseases and are now threatened by an
imported insect pest. The Agricultural Experiment Station in
Connecticut has been working on these problems since they were
first discovered, using biological control measures and breeding
trees for resistance. Breeding and selection of resistant timber
trees is a long process, but significant progress has been made.
Hybrid trees are being planted in the forests of Connecticut, with
biocontrol used to keep native trees alive. The next generation of
trees will have all the local adaptability of the native population
with resistance genes from our timber hybrids.

Sandra Anaganostakis is an Agricultural Scientist in the
Department of Plant Pathology and Ecology at The Connecticut
Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, Connecticut.
She received her Bachelor’s degree in 1961 from the University
of California at Riverside, and her Master’s degree in botany
from the University of Texas at Austin. She joined the staff of The Connecticut Agricultural
Experiment Station in the Department of Genetics in 1966, and later completed her Doctor of
Agronomy degree at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, West Germany in 1985.
Sandra has worked on the genetics of various fungi, including those that cause corn smut
disease and Dutch elm disease. She has been working on chestnut blight disease (caused by
Cryphonectria parasitica) since 1968. After completing basic studies with the fungus she
imported Hypovirulent (virus containing) strains from France (1972) and demonstrated that they could be used in the United States for biological control of the disease. She has worked on the ecology of the blight fungus and its control by hypovirulence, and studies of virulence in the
fungus and resistance in the trees. She continues the Experiment Station project on chestnut tree breeding to produce better timber and orchard trees, and is the International Registrar for cultivars of Castanea for the International Society of Horticultural Science. Her current research has expanded to include canker diseases of butternut trees in Connecticut.

Directions. The Mountain Lakes House is located in the Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve at the
end of a half-mile driveway at 57 Mountain Avenue in Princeton Township. For detailed travel
directions, please consult http://www.mountainlakeshouse.org.

Princeton Battlefield--Big History, Big Lawn, Big Trees

One of the finer ways to spend a July 4 afternoon is on the grounds of the Princeton Battlefield. Chances are, you'll see historian John Mills, who in stature, bearing and voice seems the very embodiment of 1776, offer a detailed account of the Battle of Princeton, and then don spectacles to read the Declaration of Independence.

It's also a good place for a native plant lover to feel ambivalent about the extraordinary expanse of mowed grass. It makes for a great feeling of openness and freedom of movement. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with the history of the place, and is surely a budget drain to mow.

Other historic sites around the country have started to manage for more authentic vegetation. One approach would be to keep a portion of the grounds mowed, while planting the rest to the sorts of native grasses and wildflowers that have more to do with the land's history. Some of the grounds are already managed this way.

Most everyone knows about the Mercer Oak, whose offspring now grows in the middle of the field near where the original white oak once stood.

There are some other interesting trees there as well. I'd heard that the grounds include two Hicans--a cross between a hickory and a pecan. The bark on the tree in the photo looks like a hickory for the first eight feet, then switches to pecan-like bark further up. Strange.

Closer to Clark House are a couple chestnut trees. These are Chinese chestnuts, not the great American Chestnut that once filled our forests and provided abundant food until the imported chestnut blight took its toll. The Battlefield would be a great place to reintroduce the American Chestnut, survivors of which have been bred to resist the blight.

Some other interesting trees, just behind the Clark House, are some very tall, statuesque black locust trees.

Plants of Mt. Tammany

 When I was a kid, I had the good luck to spend some quality time on top of mountains. They all had telescopes on them, which was my dad's work, but I was more drawn to the vistas, the rocks, the smell of dry earth. On one fantastical evening, I walked to the edge of a mountain in Chile to find an infinite expanse of fog stretching out below like a frozen ocean illuminated by moonlight. Yes, mountain tops are a fine place to be.

I've long wanted my kids to know the pleasure of climbing a mountain. What is life after all, but a long and challenging hike towards a view of the infinite? So news of a substantial mountain only an hour and a half away, combined with the promise of fall colors, prompted me to pull my family out of its weekend routine for an autumn jaunt.

Recognizing the plants that make the mountain home adds tremendously to the meaning of a walk up a mountainside.

First plants to catch my eye were the witch hazels, blooming incongruously in late October, their flowers mixing with the yellow of the leaves.

The chestnut oaks, very common in this woodland of thin moutainside soils, are easy to identify just by the bark, which looks like gray blocks stacked one upon another.

The leaf of a chestnut oak is somewhat reminiscent of the chestnut leaf, but broader and with rounded lobes.

As the trail got steeper, I was beginning to wonder how all those very heavy rocks had magically arranged themselves conveniently in stepwise patterns, when we encountered a volunteer crew fixing a section of trail. With techniques harkening back to a pre-machine era, they had strung a heavy cable between trees and were in the process of pulling a substantial rock (left in photo) across the mountain slope and into position on the trail.

A pack animal, too, hinted at an era long past. It's good to see that terriers are assuming the role, now that mules are hard to come by.

The first panorama was downstream along the Delaware River. The rock bluff to the left was covered with columbines, which would be quite a show in the spring.

The summit appeared sooner than expected. Walk down the slope a ways to get a clearer view up and downstream. From here, basking in the sun, we watched a pair of ravens soar and play high over the gorge. Two more joined in, their game seeming to be to see how close they could get to each other without colliding. Vultures, of less mind than ravens, soared peacefully in the distance, showing little interest in games.

Vistas like this are made to be drunk in, to fill the mind with immensity and color until the next chance comes along.

Shifting focus to the close at hand, it was time to see what kinds of plants can eke out a living in this spectacular but thin-soiled setting. There was a hawthorn or two,

winged sumac (note the "wings" along the central leaf axil),

and an alder of some sort, though I'm accustomed to finding alder in a floodplain.

Underfoot was a squiggly grass that's probably poverty oat grass (Danthonia).

The way down on the blue trail starts by going slightly up, along the spine of the mountain. Lichens grow on rocks and tree trunks, making them seem part of a whole. Growing amidst the rocks is a native, fine-leaved evergreen grass that may have been the main constituent of early American lawns.

One of the real delights encountered on the broad mountain top is lowbush blueberry, which turns radiant red in fall.

This open woodland of chestnut oaks with a thick understory of blueberries is reminiscent of savannas that once were common in the east. It's easy to imagine black bears gorging themselves on the berries in August. I've seen similar oak/blueberry pairings in the NJ pinelands under a mix of oak species, and in the piedmont of North Carolina under post oaks. All these locations had in common a very poor soil.

Sometimes the trees imitate the meandering trails.

I was glad to encounter an old and rarely seen friend, the striped maple (Acer pennsylvanicum), more shrub than tree, with white and green stripes on its trunk.

Mountain laurel mixes with the blueberries in the understory, and becomes more numerous as the blue trail begins to descend.

Wintergreen, which my daughter said smells like toothpaste, grows under the mountain laurels.

The blue trail merges with the Appalachian Trail at the base of the mountain, where a stream cascades down through a lush valley of Rhododendrons, ferns, native wild hydrangeas and purple-flowering raspberry.



A note about the trails. The trailhead for the "Red Dot" trail is accessed from I-80 as it heads into the Delaware Water Gap. There are two parking lots several hundred feet apart, the second of which has very basic facilities. Most people take the "Red Dot" trail up and down, but the "Blue" trail, which is a bit longer but gentler in slope, is a great way to hike down the mountain. It's easier on the knees, escapes the traffic noise rising from the Gap, and passes through the savanna woodland at the top and a gorgeous valley of waterfalls down near the bottom.

Chestnuts Boiling On A Stovetop Fire

This week's roadside menu features chestnuts. The American chestnut, once a prominent tree in our forests and an important source of food for wildlife and people, was laid low by a lowly imported fungus more than a century ago. The native species is making a slow comeback thanks to decades of breeding to develop immunity to the disease, but in the meantime, there are chestnuts of Asian origin scattered here and there in Princeton that scatter their tasty treats on the streets this time of year.

The treats come encased in a spiny covering that looks and feels like a baby brown porcupine.

Squirrels, as always, get first dibs, combing their whiskers at the same time.

But a few yield up a shiny treasure for lowly humans.

Though Mel Torme makes chestnuts roasting on an open fire sound appealing, the first batch tasted great after 15-20 minutes of boiling, with a flavor reminiscent of sweet potatoes. Recently, though, a friend roasted some on a gas grill for a similar amount of time, and it has to be said that the aroma generated by a plate full of freshly roasted chestnuts is enough to endear one for life to this rarely encountered food.

As any squirrel can tell you, the chestnut is not to be confused with the Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), which lacks the dense spines and is inedible. Palmate (leaflets radiate out like fingers from the palm of the hand) leaf and nut in photo. I used to collect horse chestnuts as a kid, in part because of their lustrous beauty but also with big plans to use them as ammunition in defense of strategic positions. Can't remember if any battles were actually waged.

Below is some advice from Bill Sachs, our resident expert on nut-bearing trees, about eating chestnuts (Castanea sp.). Harvesting chestnuts from the roadside, it's hard to tell if they've already cured for a week, and the chestnuts we've cooked thus far have been free of any bugs, but it's good to keep these things in mind. Also, be sure to score the shell before cooking. Otherwise they can explode like popcorn. I had one spit in my eye.

From Bill:

"Most nuts need to “cure” for a week or more after harvest to reduce their moisture content before they acquire proper flavor and texture.


One note of caution… before you roast your chestnuts, cut a couple of them in half to see if they contain curculio larvae.  The chestnut curculio or weevil is a fairly widespread pest that lays its eggs in developing chestnuts.  When the chestnuts fall to the ground, the change in temperature signals the eggs somehow and they hatch.  The result can be an unpleasant surprise.  In their natural life cycle, the larvae emerge from the chestnuts by eating a small hole in the shell and burrowing into the ground to emerge a year or two later as the next generation of weevils."