About Us
Hello from the Kentucky Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation!
We are an active group of Volunteers who work together to help the national effort to restore the American Chestnut back into its native forests. With our Partners, we manage several orchards of hybrid American Chestnuts and full American Chestnuts that facilitate breeding options.
Wild American Chestnuts are still found across Kentucky in their native range forests. While an extremely small number of wild American Chestnut trees survive the blight to grow large enough to produce flowers and burrs, there are many sprouts that grow from the roots of the original trees. Take a look at the original American Chestnut Range Map. American chestnuts like well drained, acidic sandstone soils. They do not like low acidic clay soils or soils and low areas that hold water.
We invite you to help search for wild Americans and to record them on the free ‘TreeSnap’ app. Or you can contact us via our Kentucky Chapter Facebook link to let us know their location and if you need help to ID that your trees are full American or a Chinese or Japanese Chestnut, or a hybrid with mixed parentage. You can see general locations of wild American Chestnuts found and mapped to date on the TreeSnap website: https://treesnap.org/ Choose “MAP” from the menu to see general tree locations, with the knowledge that the app moves the exact tree locations by about five miles each to protect the individual trees and the landowners. With the “OBSERVATION CATEGORY” filter box, select “American Chestnut” to remove the visual clutter of other species that are also entered into TreeSnap.
JOIN US. Become a Member. Become a Volunteer. Click on the BECOME A MEMBER button to the right to simultaneously join the national TACF organization, plus the Kentucky Chapter. You will enjoy working beside and developing friendships with many other conservation minded people who are taking a variety of actions to do our part, along with our sister Appalachian state chestnut chapters, to restore this iconic American tree.
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Wild American Chestnut "Root Sprouting" experiment results Berea College Forest November 22nd
Clint Patterson, Berea College Forester, with visiting environmental artist "Tallie", mascot "Henry" and Ken Darnell went into Berea College Forest (9,000 acres) to check results of an experiment to promote root growth on young wild American Chestnut sprouts,
Good work by UK's Lee Grace to apply pine bark fines to the base of several small sprouts, covered by landscape cloth in June 2022. After two growing seasons, we hoped for enough new roots to cut the sprouts loose from the mother trees and transplant nearby in a sunlight opening to encourage growth and catkin production.
Though the experiment was not a success, the KY Chapter continues to Partner with Berea College Forest to develop flowering wild American Chestnuts. * * * * * Berea College Forestry Outreach Center
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Volunteer Work Day at TACF / EKU Partnership Regional Chestnut Seed Orchard completed November 14, 2023
Thank you EKU Biology Grad Students for a productive and fun day. We replaced old bird warning ribbons, cut out 200 sprouts from old stumps, watered seedlings for 8th time this year,
Thank You Alexia, Katie, Ricky, Zach, Hazen, Maddie, Hannah, and Jessee. Working with Amos and Ken ******
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The Kentucky Chapter is blessed to have a strong Partnership with EKU's Biology Professors and Students. We have now sorted down to the most resistant 16% of the trees planted, and will continue to sort to the best 2% ***
We had a great time, thank you for showing us the ropes around the orchard!
Thanks!
Connie Wilson
Next VOLUNTEER WORK DAY EKU / TACF REGIONAL CHESTNUT SEED ORCHARD
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 14th 10:00 am - 2:00 pm
With four successful recent VOLUNTEER WORK DAYS now complete at EKU's deer fenced, Hybrid Chestnut Orchard, we have one more Work Day scheduled for this year.
Several EKU Biology Grad Students will join us to complete final details of trimming out sprouts, trimming along the fence, and replacing bird warning pink ribbons around the perimeter of the fence.
Join us. **** Bring loppers, hand pruners, pruning saws, water, lunch, leather shoes. Or, just come to meet fellow "Chestnutters" and to see our trees. 🙂
If you need directions to the orchard, text Ken Darnell: 859 585 9520 Or email: dkdarnell@roadrunner.com
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Latest News
Using Pollen from Land Between The Lakes
WE’RE SO HAPPY …….. RETURNED TO STEVE HARTMAN FULL AMERICAN ORCHARD, SCOTTSVILLE, KY near Tennessee Border to apply pollen from three LBL wild Americans, harvested, processed and stored last June by Lee Grace, UK Forestry Technician, from trees previously TreeSnapped...
KY TACF Partnership with USFS Daniel Boone National Forest
Thank you Scott Ray for inviting us to attend DBNF Annual Meeting held at Berea College Dr. Ellen Crocker, Scott Ray, and Ken Darnell, KY TACF Board Members, conducted a presentation on TreeSnap and the State University of New York's "Darling 58" transgenic American...
Many Miles Completed in Search for wild, full American Chestnuts Across Kentucky
Our Kentucky Volunteers have driven and hiked many miles across the state searching wild full American Chestnuts and “Snapped” them into our data base using the free TreeSnap app. We estimate that we have observed close to 4,000 wild Americans, “Snapping” 1,543...