FUTURE OF THE CHESTNUT TREE 



559 



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Fig. 2. American Chestnut, Central Maryland. Photograph supplied by the 



United States Forest Service. 



It is well known that chestnut was much more abundant and important 

 throughout the Piedmont region and at places in the mountains themselves than 

 is the ease to-day. 



Records show that during the first half of the past century, chestnut formed 

 an important part of the growth forest throughout the western Piedmont sec- 

 tion, although probably never as important a one as in the mountains. It was 

 also apparently found much farther east than at present and may have at one 

 time reached the Coastal Plain. 



About seventy-five years ago it began to die throughout the eastern portion 

 of the plateau and by the sixties it was dying throughout Guilford county and 

 to the west. In the early eighties it began to die throughout Iredell, and the 

 counties. north and south of there. Since then the "death wave," as we may 

 call it, has traveled west and overflowed the Brushy and South Mountains; has 

 reached half way up the slopes of the Blue Ridge, and is still rising in the 



Laboratory of Forest Pathology, U. S. Dept. of Agric, and the North Carolina 

 Geological and Economic Survey; and soon to be published by the latter. 



