With craggy bark and shaggy branches of feathery leaves, the American chestnut could reach 100 feet tall during its heyday. Its trunk could be 13 feet wide. The trees huddled along the Gulf Coast for some 8,000 years during the most recent ice age, sheltering in the relatively warm stretch from Florida to the Mississippi River, because mountain peaks even in the southernmost part of the Appalachians were too cold for chestnut trees to grow. Then, as the snow receded northward 20,000 ago, the trees slowly mi
Source: The American chestnut tree is coming back. Who is it for? | Grist
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