About Us

Hello from the Kentucky Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation! 

 We are an active group of Volunteers who work together to help the national effort to restore the American Chestnut back into its native forests.  With our Partners, we manage several orchards of hybrid American Chestnuts and full American Chestnuts that facilitate breeding options. 

Wild American Chestnuts are still found across Kentucky in their native range forests.   While an extremely small number of wild American Chestnut trees survive the blight to grow large enough to produce flowers and burrs, there are many sprouts that grow from the roots of the original trees.   Take a look at the original American Chestnut Range Map.   American chestnuts like well-drained, acidic sandstone soils.   They do not like low acidic clay soils or soils and low areas that hold water.

We invite you to help search for wild Americans and to record them on the free ‘TreeSnap’ app.   Or you can contact us via our Kentucky Chapter Facebook Page to let us know their location and if you need help to ID that your trees are full American or a Chinese or Japanese Chestnut, or a hybrid with mixed parentage.   You can see general locations of wild American Chestnuts found and mapped to date on the TreeSnap website:     https://treesnap.org/       Choose “MAP” from the menu to see general tree locations, with the knowledge that the app moves the exact tree locations by about five miles each to protect the individual trees and the landowners.   With the “OBSERVATION CATEGORY” filter box, select “American Chestnut” to remove the visual clutter of other species that are also entered into TreeSnap.

JOIN US.   Become a Member.    Become a Volunteer.    Click on the BECOME A MEMBER button to the right to simultaneously join the national TACF organization, plus the Kentucky Chapter.      You will enjoy working beside and developing friendships with many other conservation minded people who are taking a variety of actions to do our part, along with our sister Appalachian state chestnut chapters, to restore this iconic American tree.