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February 17, 2026

Can science return American chestnut?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Billions of American chestnut trees once covered the eastern United States. Every Christmas, they're called to mind by the holiday lyric “chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”

But by the 1950s, this venerable tree went functionally extinct, culled by a deadly airborne fungal blight and lethal root rot.


 
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