Editorial: Lessons from science and a tree

Trees define places, and no tree defined the eastern United States like the American chestnut. But by the middle of the last century, these mighty trees were all but extinct, victims of an Asian fungus.

Miraculously, that devastation might well be reversible. Scientists now believe they've come up with disease-resistant varieties that could survive in the wild -- a big step toward restoring the king of the eastern forests.

This is great news on its own, but it's especially noteworthy because of implications that go far beyond a single tree, however precious. If the American chestnut is revived, it will be because of science, teamwork and the kind of long-term thinking so rare in this day of instant gratification and quick fixes. The death and potential resurrection of the American chestnut thus offers some lessons worth heeding.

The first is that the world has been shrinking for a long time. In the early 20th century, a fungus accidentally imported from Asia started killing the chestnut trees -- and didn't stop until a mind-boggling 4 billion were dead, leaving U.S. forests all but devoid of the beloved giants by mid-century.

The loss was catastrophic. These majestic trees, up to 100 feet tall, carpeted the ground with nuts that fed a vast array of creatures from turkeys to humans. The wood was light, strong and rot resistant, helping make the chestnut tree a linchpin of the rural economy. To appreciate their importance, look at local maps: There are Chestnut Streets all over, including on Long Island, where the American chestnut was abundant.

The tree would still be history if not for the willingness of plant scientists to take the first steps in a potentially century-long journey by founding the American Chestnut Foundation in 1983. (Another lesson: patience matters.) By crossing American chestnuts with their blight-resistant Chinese counterparts again and again, the foundation has produced trees free of any non-American characteristics except, it is hoped, the desired blight-resistance.

The foundation's techniques are time-honored. But while traditional hybridization was going on, gene science was leaping ahead. Scientists at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, in Syracuse, launched work on a very different approach -- and this one too is bearing fruit with the foundation's support. The SUNY scientists are using genetic engineering to produce chestnut trees with only a handful of Asian genes -- just the blight-resisting ones, or at least so they believe. Last week, 10 were planted at the New York Botanical Garden -- in the Bronx, where the blight was first discovered in 1904.

Better yet, what the scientists have learned along the way can probably be applied more broadly -- to the elm, for example, another great American tree virtually eradicated by foreign blight. (Elm Streets are also common on Long Island and beyond.)

And therein lies another lesson. Many people are frightened by the idea of genetically modified plants. But humans have been messing with the environment for a long time; used judiciously, genetic engineering could be a way of undoing some of the damage we've already done.

Just last week the emerald ash borer, another deadly Asian invader, was found in Dutchess County, east of the Hudson River -- a sign that the threat to yet another great tree species is spreading. Ash wood is made into bats used in Major League Baseball.

A full-scale revival of the American chestnut is still decades off, but the effort meanwhile points the way to saving many other species. Good thing the folks behind the project got started when they did.