It was Thanksgiving Day when Uncle Victor and I decided that we’d add a special nutty crunch to our stuffing — with chestnuts.

We had just gotten a fresh crop, brown-paper bagged in our CSA box from Penn’s Corner Farm Alliance, and we set to work scoring and roasting the batch. The house smelled so good rich and sweet and warm, like caramel popcorn. In minutes, the smell transformed to that of crisp French fries. And then, the air wafted of charcoal. We were too late. We had burned our chestnuts. Tearfully, and with fingers blistering, we tried to salvage any of our charred local jewels. In the end, only four nuts made it into our “chestnut” stuffing, a feat that had us begging our guests to alert us if they’d gotten one of the “prized bites.”

I didn’t know that day how lucky we were and how grave a sin we had committed. Chestnuts are a big deal in Pennsylvania. What most people don’t know is that the American chestnut is indigenous to the Appalachian Mountains. There was a time when chestnut trees made up 25 percent, more than 200 million acres, of regional forests. They were a vital part of the economy, and chestnut wood was a major export for Pennsylvania.

The species was devastated by a fungal blight that many believe was brought in on a Japanese chestnut tree, which produces nuts much larger than those of the American tree and was projected to double the export. The first blight fungus was named and cultured in 1904 in The Bronx Zoo.

The fungus disperses through spores in the air, through rain water, and through wildlife.

The blight is a wound pathogen, which means it enters through a blemish in the bark and kills the living part of the tree. When the wound or canker completely surrounds the tree, it girdles it as effectively as woodsman with an ax. Every part of the tree above the canker dies. Within 50 years, the fungus had spread, killing 4 billion trees, a quarter of the hardwood population, and eliminating half of the food for wildlife in our forests.

However, the species is not extinct. Sara Fitzsimmons, regional science coordinator for the American Chestnut Foundation (the Pennsylvania Chapter is based out of the Penn State Partnership Office at University Park), is working to make the trees more blight resistant and to restore the trees to their native forests. Fitzsimmons calls the trees “effectively extinct” because they do not reproduce the way the trees should. Some sprout back from old stumps or roots, but without the help of researchers the trees are unlikely to produce enough nuts to overcome predation, early mortality, or to grow large enough to become commercially viable. But the researchers are not as concerned with the economy as they are with the ecology. The formerly ubiquitous American chestnut tree is late-flowering, typically unaffected by seasonal frosts, and, at one time, was the single most important food source to animals in the Appalachian region.

The researchers have planted demonstration orchards all over the state, with new ones in Mercer, Washington, and Clarion counties this year.  The trees often grow for eight to 15 years, fruit, and then die. So when an American chestnut tree is identified in the wild, the group “swoops down” and enters it into their research. “We’re trying to save that genetic diversity,” Fitzsimmons says. “We’re getting better and better, at adding stronger genetics. The trees will hopefully live longer. Our goal is to have trees that are strongly resistant to the blight.”

Bill Lord, the American Chestnut Foundation’s historian and grower, says his Highland Park orchard doesn’t look too hot. He teamed up with Fitzsimmons and her team to plant 102 seeds in 1996. Of those, 93 germinated. But within three years, blight infection was noted. Most interesting, the oak trees also on the property, were also infected. Within eight years, half of the trees had died. All of the remaining trees are what researchers call “cankered.”

“They all look like they have ugly wounds,” Lord says. “They are callous and knotty, some of them 30 feet tall, but not an attractive sight.” Lord’s trees still produce a small crop of nuts, which he turns over to Fitzsimmons for future planting and study. Though, he doesn’t always follow the rules. “When I go out to harvest, heck, I eat a few.”

While the American Chestnut is dying, other species of chestnut trees are still flourishing. The Chinese and European chestnut trees are most prevalent. These are the ones you’ll find in grocery stores and at farmers’ markets (or in your CSA box, like me and Victor). “Of course, we all think the American chestnut tastes far better,” Lord says.

Fitzsimmons says you can even still find them in the wild. “If you walk along a ridge,” she says, “and you beat the squirrels and turkeys, you might find a handful, enough to snack on during a Penn State game. Or, I guess, in your case, a Pitt game.”