American chestnut tree in Centreville is the 'holy grail' for conservationists

The survivor has 2 branches coming out of trunk each roughly 42" in circumference, it is not as tall as the one in the article but it's probably got similar girth. The tree is at least 70 years old, I'll confirm with the landlord whether he planted it or if it survived from before his time (he's been here approx 90 years, and I know one red oak and an eastern red cedar is older than he is). We do have Chinese/Japanese chestnuts on the grounds here that are more prolific and it's likely the seedlings I have are hybrids, but who knows?

One interesting thing I noted from the American vs. Chinese/Japanese chestnuts is the chestnut weevil does not appear to infect the nuts.

It also makes me wonder. There was an estimated 30-60 million buffalo before colonialism in the Americas. However, those numbers were probably only possible to reach because of human activity driving out other apex predators and becoming themselves the apex predator. Similar story with paw-paws. Though they're not necessarily being threatened by anything currently, their range is decreasing. It turns out humans were essential for its distribution (likely due to other megafauna going extinct). Another example that comes to mind is the "prairie turnip" which as a staple food of many peoples that lived in the grasslands. Despite harvesting being a destructive process, the action actually ended up helping to spread their seeds. Without human harvest we've again seen a decrease in their range. I can also go on about how essential California cultural burns are for most of the "native" ecology, but I'm sure you get the point

Anyways I guess what I'm getting at is: I wonder how much humans played a role in it achieving such a widespread distribution.

There was a recent book called Dark Emu about aboriginal Australian's role in the native landscapes. Early colonists often remarked that the place looked like a giant, well-managed park. Well it turns out they actually did play a huge role in purposeful management of it. They even grew grains in massive monocultural fields that were often even larger than modern agricultural plots. Similarly there's been a ton of recent research into Amazonia and looking at it as a "manufactured landscape" because of how important the purposeful management of it by native peoples was to the ecosystem as a whole

I just saw Eliza Greenman speak on this subject, never expected that to circle back to HN.

But, then again, the common fig also has many many cultivars with different growth habits and fruits

I have an F1 hybrid American/Chinese hazelnut in its 9th year on my little hobby farm (southern Ontario). It's done ok, no blight ... yet. It's too far from my other chestnuts (Chinese) to get pollinated to produce nuts tho. I keep meaning to get more trees. It's a nice looking tree.