Thomas Fowler locates Mother Tree near Springer Mountain

Thomas Fowler locates Mother Tree near Springer Mountain
GA-TACF member Thomas Fowler, who lives near Ellijay, has located one of Georgia's largest living American chestnuts trees. Fowler was first told about the tree in the 1990s by Edwin Dale, a now retired U.S. Forest Service employee. Having recently recalled an earlier visit to the tree--which is located in the Toccoa Ranger District of the Chattahoochee National Forest--Fowler returned to the site northeast of Springer Mountain in November 2004. Apparently, the tree is still living, although signs of large, grown-over cankers are present on the large trunk. Fowler measured the tree's circumference at 51 inches and estimates it to be more than sixty-feet tall. Several open burs collected from around the tree by Ellijay resident Glenda Warwick suggest that some viable nuts may have been produced in 2004, so a following-up visit to the tree is scheduled for the spring of 2005. At that time, positive identification of the tree will be made and its health status officially documented. Due to its close proximity to a Forest Service road, attempts to pollinate the large tree will be made if the tree blooms in early summer.
Fowler's find is made even more significant due to the fact that Georgia's champion American chestnut tree, a four-feet-in-diameter specimen, was taken down in February, 2004 by its owner Louis Fountain of Ray City, in south Georgia. In a recent telephone conversation, Mr. Fountain said the tree had only a portion of its trunk living and he and his family was afraid the enormous tree would fall on their home. Mrs. Fountain also added that their American chestnut specimen was one of a pair of trees that were planted at each end of their home site near the beginning of 20th century. Although one tree died soon after the blight struck south Georgia during the late 1940s, the other continued living, occasionally even producing a viable nut. The tree had been featured in the Georgia Department of Agriculture's "Market Bulletin" and was officially submitted to Georgia's Champion Tree Program in 1994.