Walizer Chestnuts

Jim Walizers chestnuts are proving to hold very similar characteristics of a true American chestnut with fast growth, high nut yield, and timber-like growth characteristics. His trees average 8-16 inches of growth in a year and by year three are mature enough to produce nuts. This is a perfect example as to why oaks were unable to replace the loss of chestnuts from the ecosystem. Chestnuts will have high fruit yields consistently every year, will produce nuts by year five and are extremely fast growing. Oaks on the other hand, are super slow growing and are commonly outcompeted because of that and they do not have consistent fruit yields. Oaks need to be at least 20 years old to produce acorns and only once every 3-5 years will have high harvest yields. The other years will be small and low acorn harvests. 

In the early stages of Walizers research, he had planted one of his successful blight resistant chestnuts. The first-year growth was not straight and was simply not the type of tree he wanted to grow even though it grew almost six feet in the first year. Walizer was curious to see what would happen if the tree was cut at the base, what would the stump sprout look like? In the picture below is Jim Walizer holding the one-year old seedling and on the right is the stump sprout after three years of growth. This proves the theory that chestnuts thrive from stump sprouts. 

One of Walizers leading questions for all of this research is, if we produce a blight resistant chestnut hybrid, how can it be reintroduced into a current Pennsylvania forest? Pennsylvania’s forests are much different than the early 1900’s forests. Today, there is little to know fire presence and there is a severe lack of cutting which results in thick old growth forests. This has led Walizer to try planting his chestnuts in a number of different places in different settings. 

The first picture shows a Walizer chestnut that have been planted on an edge. 

The next images, the first row had two years old seedlings growing and then a fire was lit to burn off the top of the tree. The stump sprouts came back and have averaged three feet of growth every year. The trees are now five years old and are 15 feet tall. 

This tree on the front corner of Walizers orchard has had the most success because of the amount of light. This orchard was planted in 2002. 

This tree was planted in the middle of the woods in 2005. Two sides of the seedling were cleared to help give sun light to the seedling. Only two sides were cleared to see what regeneration would look like in a forest. In the picture, the tree is thriving at 14 years old and is competing with the rest of the trees in the stand. Spring of 2019, the tree was 56 feet tall. 

This is one of the only orchards studying American Chestnuts that has found natural regeneration. Walizer has manipulated the ground inside the orchard to act as an actual forest floor instead of mowing and removing the grass and debris. This is to help encourage and promote natural regeneration. 

After all of the research that Jim Walizer has done, there are a few things that he has discovered about these new chestnuts that will be critical for the future and reintroduction into Appalachian Forests. First, chestnuts need the right type of soil, mesic soils that aren’t to wet. Too much water will kill the trees. They also cannot grow in heavy limestone soils. Chestnuts also best grow on forest edges with lots of sunlight making them a shade intolerant species. 

We now have a tree that can successfully grow and be sustainable. But the question still remains, how do we reintroduce the American Chestnut hybrid back into the Appalachian ecosystem?