I hope you get the chance to look at Sara Fitzsimmon's blog about the joint US/China scientific research visit to China. Sara blogged about the journey this past autumn which included Dr. Kim Steiner, Dr. Fred Paillet, Dr. Fred Hebard and Sara Fitzsimmons.

The blog can be found at http://www.personal.psu.edu/sff3/blogs/chestnuts_in_china/.

I was most intrigued by the photographs of keyed out chestnut trees that greatly differed from my expectations. Sara has photographs of Castenea sequinii (know as Mao Li in chinese - literally "the dwarf chestnut") that exceeded 80' in height. Similarly Castenea henryi (Zhui li) is found in sizes and form that surprised me.

A taste of what you'll find in her blog is found in this quote from Sara

... there were some very large chestnuts up there. In fact, the dominant tree in the canopy was either C. henryi or C. seguinii. Based on our observations, we did not see any C. mollissima at Zehao's plot. But with sizes > 20" dbh and most trees over 80feet in height, wonderful, straight form and no evidence of blight infection - not even suspicious lesions like we'd seen below on the road - this was a wonderful place to observe chesntut. And is also a site for us to note for continued observation and collection.

This should all be very exciting for ecologists and chestnut lovers in Connecticut, as we may find significant new sources of resistance with material that has ecological qualities more like those we would like to see in our American chestnut.

A discussion with Sara Fitzsimmons got me thinking about creating this poster and frame. I'd been thinking about this for some time and had been limited by the ability to actually get the chestnut wood for the frame. Sara suggested she might be able to help find someone that would be willing to donate the wood ... donations of this sort are always appreciated. To better provide her with some "vision" of the idea I decided to use Sketchup to create the design and video. It took several hours (I considered it training) but as the saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words." The Frame is designed of 1.25 inches by 2.75 inches American chestnut. Frames stand 68 inches tall, and would be joined by either knife-hinges mounted top and bottom, or double-acting hinges mounted to style edges. Posters would be mounted front and back on foam or plywood panels, and would slide in from the top so that they could be readily updated.

After creating the model, I was able to animate the model in Google Sketchup. Click on this link to see the Youtube animation video which is of decidely mediocre quality. A better quality rendering of the animation can be seen in this site hosted Avi quality video [5mb] which gives a better idea of the integration of poster and frame.

Sketchup also allows the exporting of photo realistic jpeg images. Click on any of the images below to see a higher resolution version.

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I was reminded this past weekend while hiking the Appalachian trail along the CT / MA border of what it must have been like a hundred years. Every so often our little hiking party would find ourselves under a spreading canopy of American chestnut leaves. A hundred years ago, when most of the trees were large American chestnut, this would have been the expectation. Today this is an unusual though not unknown treat. I only hope that I'm not the only person who recognizes when it happens.

Cheery trail hiker holding out a sample leaf - Photo taken by Bill Adamsen
Click on photo for larger view.

Two weeks ago I took my retriever for a quick hike along the trail and ran into some kids from the AT conservation maintenance unit. We got talking and realizing I would pass them again on my way out, I planned a little discussion on trees. I grabbed three different leaf samples: Chestnut Oak, American beech and American chestnut to show the kids and compare and contrast the leaves and talk about the similarities and differences of both the leaf morphology as well as tree ecology. I expected (and indeed it happened) that this would lead to an opportunity to discuss the trees life histories as well. These kids and their leader were more than up to the discussion (it was a sulty 85 degrees and they welcomed the break) and were thrilled to learn about the chestnut and that they were working in close proximity to so many remaining sprouts. One of them even knew that the three samples came from the same family ... fagacea ... which thrilled me as you can imagine.

A canopy of American chestnut leaves are not infrequently found along the Appalachian Trail in CT and MA - Photo taken by Bill Adamsen
Click on photo for larger view.

I hope that more young people take an interest in caring about the outdoors like these conservation workers. I hope that more kids and people learn about the ecological disaster that was the chestnut blight ... and that people can take steps to right a wrong, like The American Chestnut Foundation is doing with the chestnut.