. Chestnut blight. Chestnut blight; Chestnut. Chestnut Blight and Resistant Chestnuts. By THE Section of Fruit and Nut Crops and Diseases, Horticultural Crops Research Branch, Agricultural Research Service' THE CHESTNUT BLIGHT EPIDEMIC Chestnut blight was first ob- served and recognized as a new dis- ease in this country at the New York Zoological Park in 1904. Later a fungus ^ native to Japan, China, and Korea was proved to be the cause of this disease. Probably the blight fungus had entered this country on Asiatic chestnut nursery trees. Be- fore 1912 we did not have a plant quarantine law.
. Chestnut blight. Chestnut blight; Chestnut. Chestnut Blight and Resistant Chestnuts. By THE Section of Fruit and Nut Crops and Diseases, Horticultural Crops Research Branch, Agricultural Research Service' THE CHESTNUT BLIGHT EPIDEMIC Chestnut blight was first ob- served and recognized as a new dis- ease in this country at the New York Zoological Park in 1904. Later a fungus ^ native to Japan, China, and Korea was proved to be the cause of this disease. Probably the blight fungus had entered this country on Asiatic chestnut nursery trees. Be- fore 1912 we did not have a plant quarantine law. As is often the case with introduced pests, the blight fungus proved to be more virulent here than in the countries where it is native. The infection spread rap- idly from its center at New York City. Soon it reached far into New England (fig. 1). Moving still more rapidly to the south, it advanced into the Allegheny Mountains and down through the Appalachians (figs. 1 and 2). Birds, insects, and wind carried the blight fungus from infected trees to healthy ones, both nearby and far away. Shipments of in- fected nursery stock, seed, bark- ' Partially in cooperation with the Con- necticut Agricultural Experiment Sta- tion, New Haven, Conn., and the II. S. Forest Service. ^Scientific names of trees and fungi are listed on pages 20-21. covered poles, and rough lumber also carried it. New infection cen- ters resulted, often many miles ahead of the main infected area. Advance spots rapidly enlarged and joined, forming continuous infected zones. Most of the early efforts at control by Pennsylvania and other States consisted in locating and cut- ting out advance infections. These efforts delayed the progress of the disease, but it soon became apparent that control was impracticable. Less than 50 years after the blight fungus was discovered in this coun- try, it had reached every part of the natural range of the American chestnut^ (fig. 1). The chestnut killed is estimated to have been
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