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FUTURE OF THE CHESTNUT TREE
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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 section, 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 theLaboratory of Forest Pathology, U. S. Dept. of Agric., and the North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey; and soon to be published by the latter.
