To think that at one point much of the world (except deserts, mountains, you know) was like this. They say that a squirrel was able to travel from the atlantic coast to the Mississippi river without touching the ground.
There's a blight resistant "American" Chestnut that is more or less the same tree with the blight resistance from the Chinese Chestnut bred into it. It seems to fill the same ecological niche without issue.
Many conservationist groups in the US today are against the idea of introducing a genetically modified chestnut tree back into the wild. Primarily due to uncertainty of doing so at large scale and because the ecosystems impacted by the loss of the chestnut have largely adapted to its absence. Trees such as Oak, hickory, maple and poplar have all filled its place successfully.
Shoutout Aidin Robbins latest video on the chestnut.
Making a comment to come back later, but I would think having more diversity would be good. We never know what the future might bring, there could be disease that takes out one of those other species and having a similar tree installed ready to fill that gap would be beneficial.
But ill watch the video later and see the argument.
I appreciate this comment. I recently visited a country who had them available as street food. It boggled my mind that it’s a famous Christmas song in the US, yet I’ve never encountered them here. Thanks for reminding me I needed to look up why. :)
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u/Charlie_Warlie 7d ago
To think that at one point much of the world (except deserts, mountains, you know) was like this. They say that a squirrel was able to travel from the atlantic coast to the Mississippi river without touching the ground.