From left to right, the trees are a blight-susceptible wild-type American chestnut (C. dentata) called Ellis 1, a blight-resistant Chinese chestnut (C. mollissima) tree called 'Qing,' and two ...

Scientists, at the time, concluded that the blight had come to the U.S. in the late 1800s from imports of Japanese chestnut trees used for food and ornamental purposes. Japanese and Chinese ...

He was right. The fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica, hitchhiked to New York aboard Asian chestnut trees headed for nurseries. Centuries of evolution between the fungus and the Asian chestnuts had ...