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.

---

Etymology

Origin of chestnut blight

An Americanism dating back to 1905–10

Example Sentences

One was a pathogenic fungus called Cryphonectria parasitica, or chestnut blight.

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

Chestnut was especially popular—not the imported European chestnut roasted on Manhattan street corners in the fall, but the smaller, soft-shelled, deeply sweet native American chestnut, now almost extinguished by chestnut blight.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann