Present Composition of Some Stands of the Former Oak‐Chestnut Forest in the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains

Abstract

Chestnut blight, caused by the Ascomycete Endothia parasitic, was first discovered in the United States in 1904 in New York City and spread rapidly northeast, west, and southwest. By 1910 it had spread as far south as southeastern Pennsylvania and in 1920 the 80 per cent infection zone extended along the Blue Ridge mountains to central Virginia. In 1926 local infections had been reported in western North Carolina, northern Georgia, and northwestern South Carolina. In 1930 Gravatt and Gill reported that infection in western North Carolina showed eighty to ninety-nine per cent. Owners of chestnut timber in the newly infected areas of the Carolinas and Georgia quickly cut as much of that lumber as possible. Most of the remaining chestnut (Castanea dentata)lt trees, dead or alive, have been gradually removed, until now, twenty years after the blight reached its peak, there are only a few scattered ghost trees left to indicate the once relatively great importance of the species. The removal of a species which made up more than 40 per cent of the overstory trees in the climax forests of an area would certainly be expected to produce changes in the composition of the vegetation of the region. It is possible that species co-dominant with chestnut would advance in rank and become the most important species in the new climax. It is also possible, as Braun (1950) suggests, that the opening of the canopy, the release of undergrowth trees, and the resulting changes in the humus layer may cause