Earth Day in Murrysville will celebrate comeback of American chestnut tree

By the 1950s, most U.S. residents were not likely to see a full-grown American chestnut tree ever again , after a fungus imported on Asian chestnuts and first discovered in the early 1900s decimated its numbers.

Thanks to the American Chestnut Foundation, which in 1989 began a breeding program to revitalize the tree and help it become blight-resistant, the tree that once dominated the eastern U.S. forests is coming back.

Westmoreland Conservancy officials will mark Earth Day 2018 at the McGinnis Reserve in Murrysville by doing a little planting of their own.

“We'll have an American chestnut planting ceremony at 2 p.m.,” said conservancy President Shelly Tichy. “We have 100 percent native tree sent by a botanist stationed along the Appalachian Trail.”

Tichy said the McGinnis Reserve, located near the intersection of Hunter Drive and Wallace Road, was the only property they have acquired with a living American chestnut tree, “and all we could do was watch it die. So we're going to see what we can do about restoring it to our property.”

Earth Day activities at the reserve will begin at 9 a.m. with conservancy officials and volunteers doing trail maintenance, non-native invasive plant removal and meadow restoration.

For more, see WestmorelandConservancy.org .

Patrick Varine is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-850-2862, pvarine@tribweb.com or via Twitter @MurrysvilleStar.