Chestnut trees in Michigan bear colossal chestnut burrs.
Colossal chestnut burr in tree. Photo by Brianne Turczynski

Update January 2024: Michigan State University publishes these resources for chestnut growers and ran the only commercial chestnut peeling line in the western hemisphere. Michigan is a top producer of commercial chestnuts.

Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. But I cannot excuse myself for using the stone. It is not innocent, it is not just, so to maltreat the tree that feeds us. 

–Henry David Thoreau, October 23, 1855

In the late 1800s, landscape architect S. B. Parsons added a new variety of chestnut trees to his commercial nursery in New York. It was the Japanese Chestnut, a tree famed for producing a larger nut than the native American variety. The trees Parsons brought from Japan looked healthy on the outside. Still, deep in the bark, these trees carried a disease so deadly it would be considered “the greatest ecological disaster to strike the world’s forests in all of history.” 

Although he designed some of the nation’s most notable park landscapes, Parsons is infamously remembered for bringing the chestnut blight to the United States. The blight continues to attack even the smallest American chestnut (Castanea dentata) saplings throughout our eastern forests.

The blight was first discovered by 1904 in Long Island, New York. By 1909, the United States Department of Agriculture was already scrambling to find a cure. At this point, the blight was present in ten states throughout the American Chestnut’s native range.

Chestnut tree with blight.

At the time, the only known cure or remedy was to cut out the blight. Foresters were ordered to search forests and perform surgery on infected trees. But the spores of the fungus spread mercilessly by rain, wind, and wildlife. The American chestnut tree population from Maine to Alabama was wiped out in just fifty years. 

Chestnut trees in Michigan stand tall against extinction

For most living today, the memory of the chestnut lives only in the first line of the popular Christmas Song made famous by Nat King Cole in 1946. The song was released just a few years before the American chestnut tree would be considered nearly extinct. The blight was so damaging that by the 1950s, four billion trees throughout 200 million acres of forest were gone. “White skeletons” towered over other living hardwoods throughout the Appalachian Mountains. 

The chestnut was one of the greatest hardwoods for furniture and fence posts, because it was rot-resistant. It was often said that one chestnut tree could take a person from the cradle to the grave because of its enormous size; the largest recorded chestnut measured 13 feet in diameter, which is why they were known as the Redwoods of the East.  According to maps of the American chestnut’s native range, the trees only made it to Michigan’s southernmost parts. But when the blight hit, Michigan trees were not immune. 

Dennis Fulbright, a plant pathologist and an emeritus professor at Michigan State University before his death, had been studying the American chestnut in Michigan for decades. In the 1980s, he found some chestnut trees in Michigan had the blight but weren’t dying. After 80 years, a novel virus had begun attacking the blight and was weakening it. 

Fulbright applied the virus to 5,000 infected American Chestnut trees in Wisconsin. Twenty years later, he found that half of the trees had survived. 

According to Fulbright, chestnut trees in Michigan are the only ones with a naturally occurring biological control, and because of his efforts to capture and name this miracle of nature, the new virus was applied to suffering chestnuts on farms all over the state, sustaining and increasing the population of native chestnut trees in Michigan. 

Coupled with this is the effort to hybridize the American with the Japanese chestnut, an ongoing project first considered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1909. Today the Colossal, a hybrid chestnut bred from both European and Japanese chestnuts, is a popular choice among Michigan farmers. 

Cultivating a Michigan tradition

LaFever Chestnuts in Fenton, Michigan began growing chestnuts in 1997. Today, more than 300 chestnut trees grow in their 70-acre orchard — mostly the Colossal variety along with some American chestnuts. Over the years, Mike LaFever has opened his farm to the public to gather nuts from September to October. Visitors can also roast the chestnuts they purchase and eat them at the many picnic tables around the fire. 

Mike and his wife, Norma, are regular fixtures in the orchard, pointing out the best chestnuts to their visitors. They often extend their expertise to guests by teaching them not to pluck from the tree but pick them from the ground using a shoe or boot to extract the nuts from their sharp and pointy burrs. 

Chestnuts roast in slotted cast iron vessels with long handles over an outdoor fire.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Photo by Brianne Turczysnki.

The Colossal yields a good harvest, but it is known to suffer in spring frosts and poorly drained soil. Though it is immune to the blight, it’s not immune to mites that wither its leaves. The American chestnut trees are not harmed by the mite but continue to suffer from the blight which perpetually attacks LaFever’s trees each year. 

LaFever, along with experts from the MSU laboratory farms in Clarksville and Jackson County, manages the blight by cutting it out and applying what LaFever described as a sort of applesauce mixture to the wound. This mixture contains the hypovirulent virus Fulbright discovered which allows the tree to continue its production and growth, but it must be constantly monitored. 

So far LaFever’s American chestnuts are doing well, but he says if his efforts fail, he will cut the tree down to use for crafting. Today, items made from American chestnut wood are extremely rare and expensive. 

Several furry looking colossal chestnut burrs lay on the ground. Two have been opened to reveal the chestnuts inside.
Colossal chestnuts in burr. Photo by Brianne Turczynski.

Can you eat nuts from chestnut trees in Michigan

Though the Colossal nut is not as tasty as the American chestnut when eaten raw, when it’s cooked it’s just as sweet, and its larger size is considered an attribute to farmers and those involved in the culinary arts. Fulbright said that “limiting the chestnut to roasting doesn’t do the nut justice, it’s a tasty ingredient in soups, salads, stuffing, chili, hummus, and desserts.”  So Fulbright began Treeborn Products Inc., an S-corporation that sells chestnut chips and flours.

Michigan’s many craft brewers have begun incorporating chestnuts in seasonal brews–something that was often seen in Europe but was unheard of in Michigan until 2006 when Ron Jefferies of The Jolly Pumpkin in Dexter began to experiment. Now the brewery offers one highly sought-after artisan ale called, Fuego del Otono, that features chestnuts. Every year, more breweries around the state are beginning to include chestnuts in their craft brews.

Interested in growing chestnut trees in Michigan? More information can be found on the Michigan State University Extension website. 

Brianne Turczynski holds an MA in education from Oakland University with a concentration in History and English. Her work has been published in the poetry anthology, Sixty-Four Best Poets of 2018 (Black Mountain Press), The 3288 Review, Michigan Out-of-Doors Magazine, and others. Her book, Detroit's Lost Poletown: The Little Neighborhood that Touched a Nation will be released with the History Press in 2021.