Hope for the American chestnut trees, a dying species – The Statesman
BRIANNE LEDDA/THE STATESMAN “A tree came down, look at that.” Sue Avery, a botanist and certified landscaper, examines a thin wire cage along the border of the Ashley Schiff Preserve on campus. A slender sapling grows in the center, hardly visible against a backdrop of leaves and debris. It’s barely mid-April — too early for the shoot to have grown leaves. A fallen tree rests barely a foot away; a few inches closer, and it might have crushed the sapling. Avery isn’t sure about the exact origin of the sapling. “It came from a batch of fertilized nuts collected from blight-resista...