Little did Dan O’Keefe know that when he first visited the Chestnut Orchard back in 2016, he would be volunteering there for the next 10 seasons.
That first visit was not exactly what he had expected. He had recently retired after 35 years as a research biologist at Dupont and was scheduled to meet Jon Wenderoth to discuss volunteering in the Orchard. Dan expected the visit to be about 20 minutes long, just to see if it was something he’d be interested in. It was a muddy February day, and as soon as he and Jon drove into the Orchard, Dan’s car got stuck in the mud.
Nevertheless, they walked around and had a nice conversation and Dan was quite pleased about the Orchard and what he could do there. When they tried to leave, however, they could not get his car out from the mud. His 20-minute visit then turned into an hours-long event. After waiting 1.5 hours for a tow truck to arrive, no sooner had the tower backed into the entrance to the orchard and attached Dan’s car than they all heard a “bang.” A car driving on Painter Road had driven right into the front of the tow truck. They then all had to wait for the arrival of a state trooper. When Dan’s car was finally pulled out, it had become dark and cold and it was near 7:00 p.m. by the time he finally got home. That was his first experience at the Orchard, and surprisingly, he keeps coming back! Notably, Jon stayed with Dan the entire time — a testament to the character of those who work at Tyler Arboretum.
Of course, Dan was familiar with Tyler before he began volunteering with the Chestnut Group, as he and his family had been members since the late 1970s. But the Chestnut Orchard, being “off the beaten path” as one might say, was new to him. His biology background, however, made it the perfect place for Dan to invest his volunteer time.
You see, all chestnut trees in North America were subjected to blight, a fungal disease introduced into North America in the early 1900s that spread up and down the East Coast (the range of the American chestnut) and killed off four billion chestnut trees. As a food source to many different wildlife (including the passenger pigeon, which suffered a demise around the same time as the introduction of blight), the trees that were lost to this disease was truly devastating. Thus, the main purpose of the Chestnut Orchard at Tyler is a conservation effort, to keep the trees alive.
Volunteer Dan O'Keefe has applied his training as a biologist to the conservation efforts of Tyler Arboretum's Chestnut Orchard.
The Chestnut Orchard team meets every Thursday morning from about mid-May through early October.
To do this, Dan, using his biology background, introduced the practice of cross-pollination when he started volunteering. Meaning, because chestnut trees are monoecious (male and female flowers on the same tree), another chestnut tree is needed to cross-pollinate to get seed. The seedlings resulting from the cross-pollination are then planted in the Chestnut Orchard and hopefully grow into healthy chestnut trees. This practice helps to conserve the health of the trees in the Orchard.
About five years ago during the height of COVID, a large healthy American chestnut tree was discovered at the Coverdale Farm Preserve of Delaware Nature Society in Northern Delaware – arborists from the Mt. Cuba Center scaled that tree to recover pollen, and Dan and his group used that pollen in the Tyler Orchard, which ended up producing a lot of progeny of the Delaware tree and are now some of the healthier trees in the Tyler Chestnut Orchard. A lot of the time, when cross-pollinating, the seedlings won’t grow because it is inevitable that they will get chestnut blight; but there has been success with the seedlings from the Delaware trees. Presently, very mature American chestnut trees are very rare. Dan and the volunteers at Tyler work hard to keep the chestnut trees alive. No surprise then that he is also the president of the PA/NJ chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation. The Foundation’s goal is to restore the American Chestnut to the native range.
In addition to cross-pollination, Dan and the Orchard Group do all of the planting, weeding, mulching and harvesting of the chestnut trees. During harvesting (collecting the chestnuts from the trees so that squirrels and other animals don’t eat them all), some 3,000 nuts are collected. Most go to Penn State or the Chestnut Foundation where the nuts are distributed to people who want to grow American chestnuts. Others are used in the cross-pollination practice with trees in Delaware. Knowing the parentage of the trees is useful – the Chestnut Group is breeding as a conservation effort. Starting new trees derived from things we know. Dan’s video on YouTube about the Orchard is the most widely viewed video on Tyler’s YouTube channel.
Apart from the broader goal of saving American chestnut trees, what Dan really loves about his volunteering experience is the people. It’s a really nice group and there is not a lot of turnover. They meet every Thursday morning from about mid-May through early October. The group also does an educational booth at Fireside events where they set up a demo table and have people taste the chestnuts.
Many people might not know about the Chestnut Orchard because it is across Painter Road from the Scenic Loop area, but it is certainly worth checking out! The Orchard Group attending to the trees is what is keeping them alive and making sure that they have a healthy environment.
