chestnut blight

American  

noun

Plant Pathology.

1. a disease of chestnuts, especially the American chestnut, characterized by bark lesions that girdle and eventually kill the tree, caused by a fungus, Endothia parasitica.

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Etymology

Origin of chestnut blight

An Americanism dating back to 1905–10

Example Sentences

But his legacy came at a cost which Appalachia has paid ever since: The imported chestnut blight killed nearly 4 billion American chestnut trees across 200 million acres of US forest.

From Salon • Dec. 18, 2023

American chestnuts were once the dominant tree species in the Eastern United States, until the chestnut blight of the early 1900s killed almost all of them.

From Washington Times • Oct. 17, 2020

“You’ve got the American chestnut blight and the Dutch elm disease, but this seems extraordinarily rapid and severe.”

From Scientific American • Jul. 5, 2020

The chestnut blight arguably ended Appalachian subsistence farming as a common practice, forcing upon a region’s worth of people a stark choice: Go into the coal mines, or move away.

From New York Times • Apr. 30, 2020

At the height of the American chestnut blight, every woodland breeze would lose spores in uncountable trillions to drift in a pretty, lethal haze on to neighboring hillsides.

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson