When I bought my timberland back in 1975 there still were remnants of the giant old chestnut trees. There was one old snag, a hollow old trunk that was weathered to a silvery color. It was about 7' in diameter. There were several others not quite as large. And there were places where the sprouts from the old dead trees were think in the undergrowth of stands of oak trees. I once hoped that the hypovirulent strains of the fungus that caused all the chestnuts to die would work to control the fungus, as it did in Europe, and all these sprouts would be able to grow back to replace the lost forests of chestnut. But no such luck. The sprouts are basically all gone now, largely because of deer browseing as well as repeated onslaughts of the fungus. And those magnificent silvery old dead chestnut tree trunks have all since fallen over and have almost completely rotted into the ground. --Spruce

Where in PA do you have alkaline soil? From what THIS map says, all of PA is at least slightly acid at least by default (not including disturbed soils I'm sure): I'm in central Ohio (Delaware County, north of Columbus) right at the line between light blue and dark blue, and my pH is between 6.9 and 7.3 (which is relatively low for my area it turns out) depending on who does the test and where I take it on my property - the front yard is higher than the backyard...so, for me, the map is spot-on Here is a link that might be useful:

"Yeah I am constantly amazed by the crap they stop at the border. Not terrorists or anything, but oranges and trees and, you know, critical stuff." Corkball, dude, you really gotta get out more! There are real, real, real good reasons that we attempt to keep certain foods and plant materials from coming into the country. I thought anyone that was on Gardenweb would be familiar with the problems involved with bringing pathogens into the country. As for terrorists, we seem to be doing a dang good job, now, of keeping them out of this country and monitoring the ones that may be here (knock on wood).

None of the pure americans to date are as resistant as the chinese. The backcross ones look majorly american in type and appearance, but there is some thickness to the leaves and depending on that tree, may be quite resistant. The gene insertion ones appear to be fully resistant, but you are depending on single gene resistance to hold up over time. It may indeed, or it may be overcome by the fungus. My person thought would be to stack resistances, all in one tree. Blight exists in pockets of Nova Scotia, stamped out when noticed, and the Wolfville trees have survived and flourished. They are wholey or mostly chinese. The seedlings from those nuts are open pollinated, meaning, the father (pollen parent) is not known. The american seednuts from Sheffields produce seedlings with some thickness in the leaves, meaning, to me, some introgression of other species......europeans, japanese, chinese. Something else, anyway, with thickness and stiffness to the leaves. I have a seedlot from northern maine too, also with a little thickness in the leaves..........and one with the thin, droopy leaves more typical of the pure americans. There is a lot of variation even in the pure species and DNA test ing is going on now to separate out the confusing appearances.