It’s hard to find wild American chestnut trees because, by 1950, a blight introduced from Asia in the early 1900s had decimated the population, but scientists recently discovered a huge surprise in the forests of Lovell, Maine, according to NPR.
They found an American chestnut that measured 115 feet tall—the tallest ever recorded in the country. The tree was surrounded by pines, which made it hard to see from a hiker’s perspective. It was discovered by air; the tree’s white flowers were in bloom and acted like a beacon.
"Old-timers talk about the hillsides in the Appalachian Mountains being covered in flowers as if it was snow, and so we were able to key in on the particular week that these were blooming and ... find this tree," Brian Roth, a forest scientist with the University of Maine, told NPR. The tree’s DNA will be preserved in a gene bank as part of an effort by the North Carolina-based American Chestnut Foundation to revitalize the American chestnut tree population.
