Bruce Beehler is a naturalist and author of 14 books, including the forthcoming “Flight of the Godwit.” This fall, I went hiking on Sugarloaf Mountain, about 30 miles northwest of the District.

In the early 20th century, a blight fungus wiped out most of the 4 billion American chestnut trees on the eastern seaboard. The loss was ecologically devastating. Short Wave host Emily Kwong dives ...

From left to right, the trees are a blight-susceptible wild-type American chestnut (C. dentata) called Ellis 1, a blight-resistant Chinese chestnut (C. mollissima) tree called 'Qing,' and two ...

[via Inhabitat] Between logging and the introduction of chestnut blight, the once prevalent American chestnut became increasingly uncommon throughout its traditional range in the Appalachians.

The New York Restoration Project has launched an effort to plant 1,000 thriving American chestnut trees that are hybridized with the blight-resistant Chinese chestnut tree across the five boroughs.

The mindless destroyer became known as the chestnut blight, and is believed to have entered this country around 1900 on infected Chinese chestnut trees delivered to a Long Island, N.Y., nursery.

Marc Wolf steps off a trail at the Mountaintop Arboretum to examine a beech tree with mottled, bumpy bark. “This is pretty typical of beech bark disease,” he said. “Beech trees would typically have a ...

For instance, more deer live there now, and the forest has gone for a long time without a significant fire. Other pests beyond the chestnut blight have entered the forest, too. The hemlock wooly ...

he asked. “Was it lightning?’” It wasn’t lightning. His dad told him of the once-dominant American chestnut and the blight that wiped them out. “So I thought to myself, ‘Gee ...

Then it all changed. In the late 1800s, a virulent chestnut blight reached American shores, and by 1940, it killed an estimated 4 billion trees, virtually wiping them off the continent.