GOING THE EXTRA MILE TO SAVE TREES

Power and tree care companies have been hard put to keep up with damage from a series of storms that have rocked the Metropolitan area, keeping crews and trucks on the run for 14 and 15 hour days.

But between storms, three of them have also gone out of their way to help the American Chestnut Foundation pollinate remnant American chestnut survivors scattered throughout Northern Virginia that are too tall to reach with orchard ladders. These trees are survivors of a fatal fungal blight that wiped out the species as a forest tree half a century ago. They are crucial to an ambitious restoration program underway for the last quarter century. Because of the contributions of Bartlett Tree Care of Leesburg, the Fairfax office of Dominion Virginia Power, and Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative's (NOVEC) Fauquier facility, their genes are being captured for the future before the parent trees succumb to the blight.

This Sunday June 22, a Bartlett Tree bucket truck carefully lifted TACF volunteer pollinator Jack Lamonica toward prebagged burrs that he will cross with male catkins from Tree BE395, a much improved hybrid from TACF's Meadowview, VA Research farms. Next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday Dominion Virginia Power and NOVEC truck crews will lift other volunteers into the sky to complete the pollination on a dozen other trees in Fairfax and Fauquier Counties.

After collecting samples from many different trees, the group compared the leaves and stems, looking for a gradient from pure Chinese to pure American. Although some differences were subtle, attendees learned to identify features that were more clearly American.

They will also be helping ladder crews of TACF who work the lower branches. The goal is to complete the task within the female flowers' 48 hour period of receptivity to the pollen grains. 70 to 80 percent of this year's pollination will be done with the help of the efficient truck crews.

If all goes well when the bucket trucks come back to collect the ripened nuts in late September, the resulting progeny will go into local test orchards donated by chestnut supporters next Spring to broaden the American gene pool of increasingly resistant nuts. In another five years, they will be tested and evaluated for the timber, leaf and nut characteristics of the original American tree and the resistance to blight of a Chinese great grandparent. The final selections from TACF breeding program will become mother trees capable of producing nuts that can sprout and compete back in a forest setting.

For further information on coverage of this visually exciting process, contact : Deborah Fialka drfialka@mac.com 703-538-5419
or vatacf@grthompson.com 540 364-0364

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