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The American Chestnut Tree is Coming Back. Who is It For?

Modern Farmer

White Appalachian communities came to rely on chestnuts as free feed for their hogs and other livestock, and as a cash crop. Enslaved people gathered chestnuts to supplement meager meals and to sell. Then, in the late 1800s, horticulturalists imported trees carrying the fungal blight Cryphonectria parasitica to the United States.