Important information on blight resistance:
Once an important hardwood timber tree, nearly 4 billion American Chestnut trees were nearly wiped out between 1900 and 1940. This was due to what is known as the Chestnut blight. The blight is caused by an Asian bark fungus accidentally introduced into North America on imported Asiatic chestnut trees.
Our pure American Chestnuts come from mature parents who have survived the blight and are producing chestnut seeds. For now, the possibility of American Chestnuts getting the blight sometime in their life is a real possibility. These seedlings are grown from chestnuts collected from a large orchard of very old American Chestnut trees which have never displayed symptoms of the blight even though the blight has affected all the other trees in the region. It is uncommon to see this happen and leads us to believe that the parents may have some natural built in blight resistance.
At this time, there are no blight proof American Chestnut seedlings available for commercial sale. There is a great deal of work being done to develop highly blight resistant American Chestnuts. However, it takes time to cross breed the trees with alternative chestnuts like the Chinese Chestnut or other American Chestnuts which have shown blight resistance. Work is also being done in an attempt to inoculate American Chestnut trees to give them built in resistance. We will offer the highly resistant types as soon as they are available. For now, these are about as good as they get commercially.