Chestnut Blight

• American Chestnut Cooperators' Foundation http://www.ppws.vt.edu/griffin/blight.html "Blight Fungus: Chestnut blight is caused by a fungus which entered our country on Asian nursery stock imported to New York around 1900. Spread by wind, rain, birds and other animals, it enters through cracks or wounds in the bark, multiplies rapidly, making sunken cankers which expand and girdle the stem, killing everything above the canker, usually in one growing season. Because it had never before been exposed to this fungus, the American chestnut was highly susceptible; like the native American tribes exposed to smallpox, the American chestnut was devastated throughout the natural range, extending over the Appalachian hills and highlands from Maine to Georgia. By 1940, three and a half billion American chestnuts had perished."
• About.com: Forestry http://forestry.about.com/od/forestdiseases/p/dis_acb.htm "Chestnut blight is a fungus that has virtually wiped out the American chestnut, as a commercial species, from eastern hardwood forests. Although roots from trees cut or killed many years ago continue to produce sprouts that survive to the sapling stage before being killed, there is no indication that a cure for this disease will be found. The fungus is widespread and continues to survive as a nonlethal parasite on chinkapin, Spanish chestnut, and post oak."
• The American Chestnut Story http://lamar.colostate.edu/~samcox/chestnut.htm 
• American Chestnut Foundation history http://www.acf.org/history.php 
• Reports from the Commission for the Investigation and Control of the Chestnut Tree Blight Disease (1912 - 1914) http://chestnut.cas.psu.edu/PaBC.htm 
• Chestnut Growers Website:  http://chestnut.cas.psu.edu/Default.html 
• Chestnut Blight caused by Endothia parasitica http://www.forestpests.org/southern/chestnutblight.html 
• Revitalization of the Majestic Chestnut: Chestnut Blight Disease APSnet   http://www.apsnet.org/online/feature/chestnut/ 
• Resurrecting the American Chestnut http://www2.volstate.edu/jschibig/resurrectingthechestnut.htm   
• Forest Pathology Org - Chestnut Blight http://www.forestpathology.org/dis_chestnut.html 
• The Canadian Chestnut Council http://www.uoguelph.ca/~chestnut/chestnut_blight.htm