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Maine – About Us
The Maine chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) was established in 1999 to help restore the American chestnut tree to our corner of America here in Maine. We live at the northernmost end of its natural range where chestnuts, like Mainers, make due with less sunshine and more cold. These suboptimal conditions made for sparser populations of chestnuts (and people) than southern climes, even before the blight.
Maine is currently home to more mature, flowering wild American chestnuts than any other state. Their success is due primarily to Maine’s geographic isolation from the denser populations of chestnut trees south of us, where the fungus spreads more readily. We have the joyful job of finding Maine’s wild trees and harvesting their nuts!
By growing chestnuts from wild trees, the Maine Chapter is preserving genes that have helped the chestnut adapt to life at the cooler edge of its range. Ultimately our gene conservation and breeding efforts are intended to produce hearty, blight-resistant populations of American chestnuts that we can use for forest restoration.
The chapter’s goals are to: 1) Protect, conserve, preserve, and propagate trees from the remaining native American chestnut populations in Maine; 2) Restore the American chestnut to a place of ecological and economic importance and self-sustainability throughout their original range in Maine, and 3) Make blight-resistant American chestnuts available to the people of Maine as soon as possible.
With your help we intend to restore this iconic species to Maine’s landscape, its wildlife, and its people.
Chestnuts Across Maine
Chestnuts Across Maine (CAM) is an exciting, new initiative of the Maine chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF). Our chapter is partnering with land trusts, state parks, schools, and town squares in Maine to establish small plantings of American chestnuts on lands open to the public. During our pilot year in 2024, ME-TACF coordinated plantings with 8 organizations! Learn more about Chestnuts Across Maine.
Board of Directors
Key Contacts
Mark McCollough, Chapter President
Eva Butler, Chapter Vice President, Volunteer Coordinator (Email)
Al Faust, Treasurer
James Day, Secretary
Thomas Klak, Chair of Gene Conservation
Eric Evans, Breeding Coordinator
Ann Rea, Seed Sales
Board Members
David Allen, Portland
Peter Bohman, Monmouth
Eva Butler, St George
James Day, Portland
Eric Evans, Camden
Albert C. Faust, Winterport
Dr. Tom Klak, Saco
Mark McCollough, Hampden
Dr. Nina Pearlmutter, Kennebunkport
Andy Reed, Unity
Dr. Brian Roth, Orono
Larry Totten, West Bath
Roger Willby, Bridgeton
Maine Chapter Menu
National Facebook
Recently, the Quantitative Research class at Emory & Henry University toured the Price and Duncan farms at Meadowview Research Farms (MRF). The students will use data collected at MRF to conduct various analyses, focusing specifically on open pollination seed data from 2022-2024. This hands-on experience allows the students to work with real-world data and gain a deeper understanding of its applications. The tour highlighted the projects the data originates from, giving them valuable context for their analyses and a clearer understanding of why their results matter. We are thankful for our partnerships with Emory & Henry University and hope to continue growing them!
#americanchestnut #castaneadentata #americanchestnutfoundation #ChestnutResearch #meadowviewresearchfarms #emoryhenryuniversity
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Plant European chestnuts 🌰
Have you looked at TACF's events calendar lately? If you're looking for some chestnut-related fun, it's a great place to start!
tacf.org/events/category/tacf/
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Last week, the team at Meadowview Research Farms focused on grafting, a project they have been iterating over the past few years by testing different techniques. Grafting involves combining the rootstock of one tree, in this case, the disease-resistant Chinese chestnut, with the budwood of another, the wild American chestnut. This helps produce multiple replicates of the valuable traits and genetics of the American chestnut for future controlled crosses and restoration.
#americanchestnut #CastaneaDentata #americanchestnutfoundation #chestnutresearch #meadowviewresearchfarms #grafting
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But.... does it help? Or does the blight still find its way into the tree? It won't come back by graft....
Dolly Parton has long been a champion of the American chestnut and a supporter of TACF’s restoration mission. Her latest involvement was participating in our documentary film Clear Day Thunder: Rescuing the American Chestnut. All of us at TACF send our deepest condolences on the loss of Carl Dean.
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Good hearted woman!
news report as we delve into the timeless love story of country music icon Dolly Parton and her husband : youtu.be/adIRIrcuQyg
This Wednesday, the Meadowview Research Farms team partnered with the Asheville-based Development team to pack and ship seeds for distribution to our members! Seed level members receive open-pollinated seed from mother trees that are chosen through our Recurrent Genomic Selection process. This ongoing initiative helps distribute high-quality seeds nationwide, supporting germplasm conservation, and is one of the ways the public can get chestnut seeds from TACF! If you are interested in receiving seeds from TACF, visit our website and become a seed level member today.
#americanchestnut #CastaneaDentata #americanchestnutfoundation #chestnutresearch #meadowviewresearchfarms #SeedDistribution #conservation
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Latest News
Calling Volunteers to Chestnuts Across Maine
Chestnuts Across Maine (CAM) is an exciting, new initiative of the Maine chapter of TACF. Our chapter is partnering with land trusts, state parks, schools, and town squares in Maine to establish small plantings of American chestnuts on lands open to the public. This...
Chestnut Science Update
A Year of Change By Mark McCollough, Maine Chapter President “Learn to expect the unexpected.” As a wildlife biologist, I learned this tenet of ecology early in my career. Nature is full of surprises from the elegant workings of the DNA molecule to the intricate cogs...