Whois & Analysis for acf.org

The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) is a large, monoecious deciduous tree of the beech family native to eastern North America.

Before the species was devastated by the chestnut blight, a fungal disease, it was one of the most important forest trees throughout its range, and was considered the finest chestnut tree in the world.

It is estimated that between 3 and 4 billion American chestnut trees were destroyed in the first half of the 20th century by blight after its initial discovery in 1904.

Very few mature specimens of the tree exist within its historical range, although many small shoots of the former live trees remain.

There are hundreds of large (2 to 5 ft diameter) American chestnuts outside its historical range, some in areas where less virulent strains of the pathogen are more common, such as the 600 to 800 large trees in northern Lower Michigan.

The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) is a nonprofit American organization dedicated to breeding a blight-resistant American chestnut (Castanea dentata) tree and the reintroduction of this tree to the forests of the Eastern United States.

The pathogenic fungus Cryphonectria parasitica (formerly Endothia parasitica) is a member of the Ascomycota (sac fungi) taxon, and is the main cause of chestnut blight—a devastating disease of the American chestnut tree that in the early 1900s caused a rapid, widespread die-off of this once plentiful tree from its historic range in the eastern United States.

The chestnut group is a genus (Castanea) of eight or nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the beech family Fagaceae, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.