Shelton home to rare tree
SHELTON — American chestnut trees, which once dotting the landscape, have been a rare find for decades — which is why the city has become an arborist’s dream.
It was recently discovered that Shelton is home to an American chestnut tree, which sits beside the Rec Path, close to Wesley Drive. Now a sign educating passersby of the history of the American chestnut sits beside the majestic tree.
American chestnuts were once the predominant tree of Eastern United States forests, and important for their economic impact, Shelton Trails Committee member Val Gosset said.
“Large, tall and fast- growing, they were prime sources of rot- resistant lumber,” Gosset said. “Their nuts provided food for people, livestock and wildlife. All that changed in the early 1900s when American chestnuts were all but wiped out by blight.”
The American Chestnut Foundation ( TACF) has devoted itself to not only saving the American chestnut tree from extinction but restoring it to Eastern woodlands, Gosset said, and this year, that mission led them to the Shelton Rec Path.
Gosset said fellow Shelton Trail Committee member Mark Vollaro is active in The American Chestnut Foundation, so he collected some leaves and sent them to TACF for confirmation of the fact that the tree was a pure American chestnut.
Once confirmation was received, Gosset said the next step was pollination.
“Since chestnuts don’t self- pollinate and there were no other flowering American chestnut trees in the vicinity, the flowers of the Shelton tree needed to be handpollinated to produce viable seeds,” Gosset added.
The American Chestnut Foundation recently pollinated the tree, with the help of United Illuminating and a Lewis Tree Service bucket truck. Now the project moves to the next step — harvesting the chestnut seeds — on Sept. 24.
“The flowers of these majestic trees are far out of reach, so TACF enlisted the help of United Illuminating, who provided a bucket truck for the pollination process,” Gosset said. “Representatives from TACF brought pollen from other Connecticut flowering American chestnuts and applied it to the female flowers of the Shelton chestnut tree. The flowers were then covered with corn bags to protect them from any possible stray pollen.”
TACF returns Sept. 24, again with the help of UI and a Lewis Tree Service bucket truck, to harvest the nuts for planting in one of its Connecticut orchards next spring.
“The hope is that descendants of the Shelton American chestnut will eventually be returned to the forest,” Gosset said.