CHESTNUT BLIGHT AND RESISTANT CHESTNUTS 3 
FIGURE 2.—Blight-killed American chestnut trees in the mountains of North Carolina. 
SUSCEPTIBLE SPECIES 
The chestnut blight fungus is 
most virulent on the American 
chestnut, but is only slightly less so 
on the European species.* It at- 
fects all the species of chinkapin 
native to the southeastern United 
‘ : : cari 
States. Chinkapins range in size 
from small, low-growing shrubs to 
trees sometimes 2 feet or more in 
trunk diameter and 65 feet tall. 
Many chinkapins have been killed 
by the blight; however, chinkapins 
sprout from below ground level 
with such persistence and so fre- 
quently come up free of the blight 
; * The blight fungus is spreading rapidly 
in Italy and has entered Switzerland and 
Yugoslavia. The United States imports 
about 20,000,000 pounds of European 
chestnuts each year, chiefly from Italy. 
AS the blight continues to spread, Europe 
Will export fewer chestnuts. 
that they may never be eliminated. 
In greenhouse tests the blight 
fungus has killed the golden chinka- 
pin, native to the Far West, and 
several Asiatic chinkapins. 
The chestnut bight fungus grows 
and fruits on several species of oak 
in the United States; in many areas 
it seriously damages one of them— 
post oak, which has a standing vol- 
ume of over 5 billion board-feet. 
Blighted post oaks have been found 
in various States from Connecticut 
to Florida and westward to Tennes- 
see, always in areas where native 
chestnut had been blight killed. 
In post’ oak, open blight cankers, 
within which the wood is exposed, 
frequently result in death of tree- 
tops, but often the fungus grows in 
the outer bark only and does no 
