PORTLAND (AP) — Portland’s mayor is planting two disease-resistant American chestnut trees in the city.
Michael Brennan is planting the new varietal of chestnuts in the Mayor Baxter Woods forested park today as part of an effort by the Maine chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation to reintroduce the trees to Maine and Portland.
Once known as the redwood of the East, the American chestnut was one of the most dominant trees in the eastern United States, growing as tall as 100 feet. But a blight overtook the trees during the first half of the 1900s, wiping out the population by the 1950s.
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