Medaille College will dedicate a rare American chestnut tree at an event on Friday, April 24 at 1:30 p.m. at its Buffalo Campus. 

The American chestnut tree once numbered at least three billion in North America, but the introduction of chestnut blight in the early 20th century decimated the species. The American Chestnut Foundation has hybridized American chestnut trees to introduce blight-resistance by backcrossing American chestnut and Chinese chestnut specimens, and it is one of these tree saplings that is now at Medaille College.

This tree is 7/8ths American chestnut, and 1/8th Chinese chestnut, and Buffalo was chosen as a location to help determine the northern extent of the chestnut tree’s adaptation to a cold climate and resistance to blight.

Bruce Grefrath, a native of North Tonawanda and resident of Washington, D.C., acquired the American chestnut sample from a contact at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and offered it to his niece, Joy Kuebler, a landscape architect from North Tonawanda. She coordinated the acquisition and planting of the specimen in October 2008 at Medaille’s Buffalo Campus as an addition to the developing urban arboretum throughout the campus.