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Musanna Akanda, Briana Williams, Erica Anderson, Julia Colangeli, Emily Wehland, Amber Clements, Jonathan Durjan, Justin Jones, Collin O’Neil, and Samuel Kamara harvested chestnuts as part of Dr. Mac Given’s ecology lab.
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On October 2, Professor Mac Given’s ecology lab helped with the harvest of American chestnuts at Tyler Arboretum.
According to the Tyler Arboretum website, the loss of healthy and productive native chestnuts in eastern forests may have been the greatest ecological disaster in recent human history. Tyler's volunteers support the Arboretum's cooperation with The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF), whose goal is to breed blight resistance from the Chinese chestnut tree into the American chestnut tree, while maintaining the American chestnut’s characteristics.
A chestnut orchard was planted at Tyler in 1997 with seedlings from Pennsylvania. The TACF program is now providing advanced hybrids that are seven generations into the process of capturing resistance to the chestnut blight.
By weeding, mulching, and pruning 150 trees, Tyler's volunteers assure the viability of a reservoir of the American chestnut. Nuts harvested each fall from these trees support breeding at other locations around the state. Tyler's volunteers also learn about the disease that devastated our native chestnut as well as participate in controlled pollination activities to create first-generation hybrids.