Posted on 08/22/2019 9:47:46 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Frankentree sounds cool. Just think of it. Harvesting frankfurters for a BBQ is all I can think of now.
(The only thing about genetically engineered plants that bothers me are the patents)
Yes. We learned that nature always finds a way. In this case, nature evolved geneticists with an incredible instinctive desire to do gene splicing on American chestnuts.
I am trying to grow American Chestnuts seedling that come from a survivor tree that is about 200 years old. If even one proves to be resistant to the fungus it will be a step forward. But only a small step. We have been attempting to breed a naturally resistant tree that will pass on it's immunity for some time.
I had an old house built around 1920 and the joists were chestnut. Obviously it was really plentiful. I can add this: 100 year old chestnut boards are hard as stone. Do not try sinking a nail into one, you’d just end up with a sore arm.
I remember searching for “sea urchins” in the forrest behind my house when I was growing up. ;o)
As a young man I worked at Catoctin mountain range for a summer camp. The building were all made of chestnut during the depression. We saw trees struggling to overcome the blight, growing a year or two only to succumb to the blight. This is a most worthy project.
I cannot imagine what could possibly go wrong.
I’m only addressing the story of the American Chestnut and most of those were gone before DDT was invented in 1939.
It does make a lot more sense than those idiots who are trying to bring back the Wooly Mammoth. There is no place on Earth where they could survive today.
In Pittsburgh they renamed the 9th. Street Bridge after Carson.
There is also a Carson Street on the South Side, which is nowhere near this bridge.
Renaming it only served to get a bunch of out-of-towners lost.
There is zero evidence of ANY such "consequences" for ANY GMO crop. The whole meme is fabricated out of whole cloth based on nothing.
There is another approach, breeding the American with the Chinese, keeping the trees with blight resistance and American form, and back-crossing to the American. I think the fourth generation is out there now, I would plant the fifth generation, 31/32 American.
There are also some really resistant big trees in the Alleghenies.
Another virture of chestnuts is that they like disturbed soil and can be used to reforest strip mined areas.
Another Asian “import” doing damage.
One of my favorite poems.
Then you are facing a losing battle. Maybe 14 years ago here in S.E. Michigan we lost all our Ash trees to the borer. In the city of Troy where I worked, the city had planted them exclusively throughout the city, especially the highway medians. On a daily commute I never really noticed them but then one day I did as they were all almost dead.
The residents in the city who had fully grown adult trees that were now dead or dying had to pay hundreds of dollars to have them cut down.........
Regarding the chemical treatment you mentioned, my neighbors had a pretty little ash tree in their back yard that they were constantly treating in the way you mentioned but it eventually died too.
Since many people here in the southern half of Michigan have vacation properties in northern Michigan, the state was warning everyone to not transport cut trees used for firewood to their properties up north......
You must work for monsanto.
The ash borer larva eat their way through the inner bark making many intersecting tunnels cutting off water to the leaves. The chemical treatment makes one wonders if a process similar to the production of bt corn for the ash tree is practical? https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/ef118
No, but I am a PhD chemist and understand science and scientific evidence. I have seen NO, NONE, ZERO hard evidence of any "GMO" negative consequences in forty years of scientific practice. "If" any had ever been found, it would have been all over the peer-reviewed science publications.
You say it exists......show me!
Oooh that’s exciting. I’m in the Arkansas Ozarks and would gladly lend my yard to the effort.
Right now I’m looking out the window at my massive, 100+ year old ash trees, and wondering how long they have before the emerald ash borer gets to them. Thanks again, China. :(
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