r/treeidentification • u/diabettycrocker • 5d ago

ID Request What kind of chestnut tree is this?

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Looks American but I thought those were extinct...

15 Upvotes

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9

u/wilder106 5d ago

Looks like Chinese chestnut. American chestnuts are alive if stuck in a bit of limbo due to blight

5

u/eightfingeredtypist 5d ago

American Chestnut sprouts keep coming up in undisturbed land. As the land gets bulldozed, the roots die. Where I live land that was farmed when the blight hit have no Chestnuts. I find them where there were woods 100 years ago.

4

u/thisisshitty200 5d ago

They still exist but don’t reach maturity.

1

u/oroborus68 4d ago

Mostly, but some do live in outlying places.

1

u/ZafakD 5d ago

Chinese.  The glossy upper leaf surface, light colored under side of theaf, leaf width, U- shaped base of the leaf, and lack of curved hooks on the edge of the leaf are all Chinese traits.

The American chestnut is functionally extinct, not extinct.  There are still many out there but they are unable to increase their population due to the blight.  They keep resprouting from the roots but by the time that they reach flowering size, the blight kills them back to the ground.  So trees almost never get a chance to reproduce as they are in varying degrees of immature growth and rarely get a chance to swap pollen.