Chestnuts!

As part of their nature swap program Roger Williams Park Zoo holds a monthly nature walk at varying locations around the state. These nature walks are meant to encourage folks to explore different areas or learn about different topics but there is another draw as well - large amounts of swap points! You can earn up to 5,000 points for participating in the walk and then turning into a journal entry about your experience.

As Julia is currently saving up swap points for a meteorite (35,000 points) she has wanted to do more of these. So this weekend we headed down to South Kingstown to learn about American Chestnut trees and the Chestnut blight. The native American Chestnut was once widespread along the Eastern U.S. and an integral part of the environment. Animals relied on the nuts and people favored the wood. But in the early 1900s the Chestnut blight struck and the trees were eliminated. But since the 1980s, scientists and gardeners have been working to develop a blight-resistant strain of the tree. They cross the American Chestnut with the Chinese Chestnut and then are able to re-cross the strains multiple times until the Chinese Chestnut is only about 1/15th of makeup of the tree but maintaining the blight-resistance from the Chinese Chestnut. The story is pretty fascinating and today, Master Gardeners from URI are growing these trees to expand the number of American Chestnut trees in the United States.