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Author | Topic: Quick Questions, Short Answers - No Debate | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
If the American chestnut was supposedly wiped out by chestnut blight, why are the woods around my house full of young chestnut trees?
I actually already discovered the answer, but I found it surprising. When I began clearing out underbrush this summer I began wondering what were all these young trees that were so familiar, but I never knew what they were. Finding out that they were chestnut trees was unexpected, because I always had it in my mind that I would never see elm or chestnut trees in the woods here in the northeast because of Dutch elm disease and chestnut blight. --Percy
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9142 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.3 |
I assume the blight will get them in a few years. Is there a mature chestnut around?
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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Asgara Member (Idle past 2323 days) Posts: 1783 From: Wisconsin, USA Joined: |
The largest stand of mature Amer. Chestnuts is in Wisconsin ... but they are also infected now.
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Theodoric writes: I assume the blight will get them in a few years. Is there a mature chestnut around? The oldest may be 10 years old. There are many saplings and just as many seedlings and just past seedling-stage. Next to white pine they might be the most common tree in the forest. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Typo (but how do you hit the "p" when you're aiming for the "m"?).
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
I actually already discovered the answer, but I found it surprising. Well, what is the answer? Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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Coragyps Member (Idle past 755 days) Posts: 5553 From: Snyder, Texas, USA Joined: |
Is the pathogen all dead up there in New Hampshire? Moved to Wisconsin, maybe?
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Omnivorous Member Posts: 3985 From: Adirondackia Joined: Member Rating: 7.2
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I'd guess they're coming up from old root systems. We see the same thing in our woodlot in the Adirondacks with beech trees: beech bark disease affects nearly all the older trees, but the root systems are so well established that they re-sprout, and there is some delay before the beetle and pathogen combo do their work, or at least until it shows. Beech groves spread via their root systems as well as by seed. We see lots of 8-10"diameter beech trees without any sign of the disease.
Some foresters recommend cutting all beech in affected forests, killing off the regrowth with herbicides, and planting other species. They also recommend watching for the small percentage of beech trees that enjoy natural resistance, allowing them to stand and reseed the forest. I'd need tankcars of herbicide to do our acreage, even were I willing, so I'm content for now to cut diseased beech for firewood and plan to do the same to the coppiced regrowth. I have noticed some larger trees that have remained free of the bark cankers. The few remaining old giant beeches succumbed to a combination of disease and storms in recent years. Of course, the emerald ash borer is coming for my ash trees, and the woolly adelgid for my hemlocks. A resistant strain of American elm is now available; potentially resistant American chestnuts are being grown now. I've thinking about planting both. I saw a mature (treated) American elm some years ago, and it was majestic."If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
I don't think there will be any more posts, so I'll give what I think is the answer now.
Omnivorous had it right, and Theodoric, too, at a less detailed level. Many chestnut trees live 10 to 20 years, plenty of time to drop chestnuts to form new seedlings. In this time they grow beneath the forest canopy to a skinny height of at most 20 feet or so. But chestnut blight eventually gets them all. They go quickly when they go. But as Omnivorous hinted, chestnut blight does not kill the root system and new chestnut trees sprout up from it. Perhaps because of the mature root system they grow very quickly. The dead parent chestnut rots into a bare flagpole at the center of its rapidly growing saplings. Serious rot takes a long time for a hardwood, so I'm guessing some of the chestnut root systems in my woods are older than 40 years. Eventually the young saplings are also hit by the blight, but just peering around my own forest the evidence seems to indicate that new saplings just continue to sprout. I was unable to estimate how long this might continue from a single root system. --Percy
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Omnivorous had it right, and Theodoric, too, at a less detailed level. Many chestnut trees live 10 to 20 years, plenty of time to drop chestnuts to form new seedlings. In this time they grow beneath the forest canopy to a skinny height of at most 20 feet or so. But chestnut blight eventually gets them all. They go quickly when they go. Wikipedia lists some instances of stands of large, unblighted and some blighted American Chestnut trees that are fairly large. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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YellowJay Junior Member (Idle past 1177 days) Posts: 4 Joined: |
Hello,
If one could create an exact duplicate universe right at the start of some sporting event, would both events unfold identically? Any response is much appreciated. Jay
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8527 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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We live in a probabilistic universe not a deterministic one. The answer to your question is a definite maybe for the sporting event and probably not for events further from that starting point.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 305 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Some while back I read a jolly if unprofound short sci-fi story. The basis of the plot was that a guy crash-lands on a tropical-island-paradise planet. He realizes that when the planet is "discovered" by the wider galactic civilization of which he is a citizen, they'll turn it into a tourist resort. He teaches the natives a plan to be passed down from generation to generation to be put into action in case of this eventuality.
Can anyone tell me what it's called and who it's by? Thanks.
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kjsimons Member Posts: 822 From: Orlando,FL Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Perhaps it is "Monument" by Lloyd Biggle Jr. ? It was a short story first that was expanded into a novel.
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Percy Member Posts: 22480 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Definitely Monument. Still sitting on my bookshelf.
--Percy
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 305 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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It is! Thank you! How could I forget the name of Lloyd Biggle Jr?
What's more, the short story version is available free online. Happy day!
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