A Study of Natural Replacement of Chestnut in Six Stands in the Highlands of New Jersey

American chestnut as an allelopath in the southern Appalachians

“…The ability of chestnut leaf extract to suppress germination of eastern hemlock in this experiment agrees with the results of Good (1968) and is one of the most interesting findings of this study. Eastern hemlock, a common cove mesophytic species, may have been able to migrate into former chestnut-dominated forests because of the loss of a continual input of allelopathic substances from chestnut leaves.…”

“…In New Jersey, Good (1968) found the strongest chestnut leaf extracts significantly reduced shoot length in black birch (Betula lemd), yellow birch (B. allegheniensis), tomato (Lycopersicon esculentuni), and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis). Good (1968) also found • evidence that chestnut leaf extract reduced the germination rate of eastern hemlock.…”

Long-term changes in forest composition and diversity following early logging (1919–1923) and the decline of American chestnut (Castanea dentata)

“…For most historical invasions, such as the chestnut blight, good baseline data on the distribution and abundance of the species assemblages are rare, and little to no information on basic ecosystem processes is available. Although various studies provided an indication of early regeneration for a variety of sites ranging from New England to Tennessee and North Carolina (Korstian and Stickel 1927;Braun 1940;Keever 1953;Nelson 1955;Shanks 1957, 1959;Good 1968), most of these studies were completed within the first 20 years after the blight infected a region. Several studies were conducted in other regions of the United States (Korstian and Stickel 1927;Aughanbaugh 1935;Good 1968;Mackey and Sivec 1973) and in the Southern Appalachians (Keever 1953;Nelson 1955;Woods and Shanks 1959;Shugart and West 1977;McCormick and Platt 1980) to examine the replacement of chestnut following the chestnut blight in the 1920s.…”

Roots, nutrients and their relationship to spatial patterns

“…This is less difficult to evaluate when a species is a dominant component of a system. A clas- sic case of the lack of importance of a dominant species on ecosystem processes is the loss of the chestnut as a component of the northeastern USA forests which did not result in any observable loss of ecosystem function (Good, 1968). This is contrasted by another study suggesting that the loss of hemlock dominance in northeastern USA forests led to significant increases in the productivity of lakes because of the change in the quality of the leaf litter additions into the lakes (Whitehead and Crisman, 1978).…”