It is now more than a century since the American chestnut tree – once 4 billion strong and towering over East Coast forests – fell victim to a foreign blight. By 1950, it had virtually disappeared.
Despite the failure of earlier scientific efforts to bring it back, thousands of chestnut devotees from Maine to Georgia have new reason for optimism.
A new project shows every sign of promise – with about 25,000 of the new chestnuts planted already.
(READ more at the Washington Post)