Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1908-07-17
NO REMEDY IN SIGHT AND ENTIRE
ASPECT OF FORESTS MAY
BE CHANGED.
RAyAGES OF DEADLY FUNGUS.
Farmers, Electric Companies, Street
Vendors and Lumbermen, All
Are Affected.
GRAVE DANGER TO INDUSTRIES.

Wnlch is rapldly Killing OF the chestnut
trees hereabcut. The tree experts at
the New York Botanical garden have
said that every chestnut tree in the
United States will eventually succumb
to the disease unless a remedy is found.
In and around New York the damage
done in the last two years has been
estimated at from S10,0O0,000 to $751;
100000.
The trouble is due to a fungous
growth, which kills the tree in a year
or two by glrdling the bark and cutting
OFF the supply of sap. The spores which
spread the infection are caught up by
the wind and carried for many miles.
This means that all the chestnuts con-
sumed here may soon have to be brought
at first from distant parts of this coun-
try and later from abroad, Not only
Will the familiar street vender no longer
be able to oher for sale one of the most
popular nuts indigenous to the United
States. but there will also be an end TO
the nurting excursions which almost
every one treasures among his expert
ences and in which thousands of city
people still indulge every autumn when
the country foliage is taking on its red
and yellow tints.
Scarcity of Poles.
In these ways two results of the chest
nut blight will be brought home to the
individual man, but there are other eff
fects which, though less directly felt,
Will prove much more serious. From an
economic standpoint grave danger
threatens the timber industry.
Millions of dollars a year are spent by
the telephone, telegraph and electric
light and power companies for chestnut
poles. Locust, cedar and chestnut, in
the order named, are considered the
most valuable trees for carrying wires
across the country, their strength and
decay resisting qualities being of a high
order, but chestnut is the only species
which can be obtained in large quanti-
ties. and it is widely used for poles. The
railroads too consume enormous quanti-
ties of chestnut in the manufacture of
ties, and hundreds of thousands of fence
posts are made from it.
The loss of this material to the public
utility companies is paralleled by a
similar loss in the income of the owners
of woodlands, not only the professional
lumberman but every farmers and wood
lot owner throughout the country. 1t
would be impossible to compute the
amount of money obtained annually by
small landowners, even around this city,
by the sale of chestnut timber from their
wood lots.
Most Valuable Tree
Another effect of the chestnut blight
may be to rob the forests of southeastern
New York of one of the species picked
out by scientists as especially adapted
to growth under the peculiar sylvicultur-
al conditions which prevail there. Prof
Roy L. Marsten of Yale university, the
forester of the $500 acre military reser-
walton at West Point, on which the
United States government has recently
instituted system of rational woodland
I i L.
preliminary working plan for the reser-
walton forests that the chestnut tree
on account of its adaptability to the soil
and its habits of rapid growth and early
maturity would probably prove the most
profitable species of tree on the tract. If
the gloomy forecast of the Bronx park
authorities is true this plan must now
be changed.
What is true of the region referred to
by the West Point forester is true also
of the hundreds of square miles of sur
rounding forests covering the range,
which are all made up of one general
type of mixed hardwood trees, inter-
spersed with many nearly pure stands of
chestnuts. The chestnut and one species
of oak persist especially in crowding out
other trees so as TO make homogeneous
forests, composed mostly of trees of
their own kind.
The forests of 4 part of the state.
which include unbroken tracts of thou
sands of acres in the near vicinity of
New York city, pass from New Jersey
enthusiastically across New York state
into Connecticut and Massachusetts.
along a spur of the Blue Ridge range.
The hills of this range, at the point
where they cross the river. constitute
the Highlands of the Hudson.
Marked Effect Upon Scenery.
In the Highlands the disappearance of
the chestnut trees will have a marked
effect upon the scenery. These trees are
so abundant there and the forested
mountain sides occupy so conspicuous
and important q place in the landscape
that there will be no escaping the devas-
tating effects of the Light Wide areas
of forests which now grace some of the
fine hills of the Highlands. such as Gro
! Nest and Bear Mountain. will be re-
placed by ugly scars showing dead
branches and withered leaves.
Lastly, there is the passing of the tas
seled chestnut blossoi so conspicuous
in the early summer. In the Highlands
the mountains take on curious differ
ences of shade as the seasons melt one
into another, varying from the russell
browns of winter through the faint tints
of early spring and changing green's of
later spring and summer to the splendid
eolors of the fall. In this scheme of
changing colors tie chestnut plays a
part.
Durin~ the period when the color of
the mountain sides is melting from the
light green of spring to the darker green
of summer a subtle change comes over
the appearance of the forests. which
seem to have become powdered, as il
we're, in q night, with a hue of Creenish
yellow visible for many miles 1t is the
chestnut trees come into bloom.
While the dogwood aas = more con-
spicuons blossom and the great tulip or
whitewood a more strikingly beautiful
flower, the chestnut is the only forest
tree which when it blooms transforms
for brief period the appearance of the
entire woodland. If il is doomed to 90
there will be many 10 me- at its death.
were it only for this reason.
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