Rare American Chestnut Tree Dedicated at the Buffalo Campus
Medaille College dedicated a rare American chestnut tree at an event on Friday, April 24 at the Buffalo Campus. In addition to comments by Medaille College President Dr. Richard T. Jurasek, remarks were made by Joy Kuebler, a landscape architect in North Tonawanda, and Thomas Herrera-Mishler, president and CEO of the Olmstead Parks Conservancy.
The American chestnut tree once numbered at least three billion in North America, but the introduction of chestnut blight in the early 20th century decimated the species. The American Chestnut Foundation has hybridized American chestnut trees to introduce blight-resistance by backcrossing American chestnut and Chinese chestnut specimens, and it is one of these tree saplings that is now at Medaille College.
This tree is 7/8ths American chestnut, and 1/8th Chinese chestnut, and Buffalo was chosen as a location to help determine the northern extent of the chestnut tree’s adaptation to a cold climate and resistance to blight.
Bruce Grefrath, a native of North Tonawanda and resident of Washington, D.C., acquired the American chestnut sample from a contact at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and offered it to his niece, Joy Kuebler. She coordinated the acquisition and planting of the specimen at Medaille’s Buffalo Campus as an addition to the developing urban arboretum throughout the campus.
Additional photos available on Flickr.com.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
April 25th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
I LOVE chesnut trees! As a kid, I used to venture onto the South campus of UB and collect chestnuts off the ground or knock them down from the trees. That got me chased by the campus police on a regular basis. They never caught me!