Not unusual, at least in the past. But deer have eaten those down so much & so often that they too have perished -- at least in the mid-Atlantic states.

John, I saw recently at an exposition that there are quite a few ongoing hybridization projects just in Maryland alone -- IIRC by the Chestnut Foundation. So efforts should eventually get a resistant, mostly Amer chestnut. Whether these will have enough "American" to naturally repopulate the forests -- hard to say.

My 'Timburr' hybrid chestnut from OIKOS continues to do OK (~15' x 15'), but it isn't growing upright -- more low/spreading like Chinese chestnut, tho the leaves look/feel like American (just like the one you show).

There is also a separate project to genetically modify American Chestnut to make it immune. The advantage of this technique is the result would have more American Chestnut genes and fewer Asian Chestnut Genes.

American chestnut set for genetically modified revival

I wonder if you could graft an Asian or hybrid Chestnut onto these old stumps? Their food reserves have to be getting depleted. Maybe a graft could resupply them with sugars?

Depending on how much space you have, you could plant a Chinese chestnut and keep itweeded so it sets seed with the local American ones. The halflings will carry the resistance genes, but only one copy of each one. From here on, it depends on how much room you have: Plant the seeds from the halflings in the woods or cross the halflings amoung themselves and plant those seeds in the woods. Nature culls the ones without any blight resistance. let me see if I can find the picture on my harddrive of a 3 year old Chinese tree in the woods, some folks say it might be a backcross, I got seeds in the mail...so use your own judgement.

I wish I could find one to get the seeds.

What part of what country are you? If you are in the US, there is Sheffield seeds, Schumaker seeds, both carry chestnut species most of the time. If you are in Canada, you can mail order from Grimo Nut Nursery....seeds or small trees.

how resistant are they? and how authentically american?

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

Thick leaves on the right, thin, drooping leaves on the left, in the above picture. Old trees are your best bet for pure americans, as we only brought other material here about 1900 or so. If you can get scions from 200 year old trees, you will likely have the pure species with no introgression, if that is your goal. Long term grafting takes in chestnuts are a bit iffy, but you get at least several years and several crops of pollen and then nuts if if the graft fails later.