American Chestnut Print, front

American Chestnut Print

$35.00
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American Chestnut Print, front
  • American Chestnut Print, front
  • American Chestnut Print, held up to show its size
  • American Chestnut Print, front
  • American Chestnut Print, held up to show its size
American Chestnut Print

American Chestnut Print

$35.00
Size

12 × 18 in overall, unframed. The plate sits on an ivory sheet with a border of about an inch, so it fits a standard ready-made frame of the same size, with or without a mat.

Printed on 189 g/m² (10.3 mil) enhanced matte paper.

Want it ready to hang? The same plate comes framed in Black or Red Oak.

Drawn eight years before the blight: the split burs, three nuts to a husk, the long toothed leaves.

Drawn in 1896. Eight years later, the blight arrived. Read the field notes ↓

The print
  • The full plate with its name, legend and credits, re-rendered from the source scan at print size, not enlarged from a shirt file.
  • Restored from a library scan of the original book; nothing redrawn.
  • Keep out of direct sunlight; a frame with glass or acrylic keeps it clean.
Shipping & production

Each print is printed for you after you order, usually within 2–5 business days, and ships on its own (separate from any shirts or framed prints in the same order). Shipping is shown at checkout before you pay.

Shipping & Production
Returns

If your print arrives damaged or misprinted, contact us within 30 days of delivery with a photo and we'll send a replacement or a refund. Because every print is made to order, we can't accept returns for a change of mind.

Plate 013

From the book

Species
Castanea dentata
As named in the book
Castanea dentata, Borkh.
Artist
C. E. Faxon
Book
The Silva of North America, vol. IX, pl. CCCCXLI, 1896
“…one of the most useful and beautiful trees of the forests of eastern North America.”

Then and now

Chestnut blight was found at the Bronx Zoo in 1904. By about 1950 it had killed several billion trees.

All sources →

Field notes

Drawn in 1896. Eight years later, the blight arrived.

When Faxon drew this branch, the American chestnut was everywhere: up to four billion trees across the eastern United States, a dominant hardwood from Maine to Georgia. Sargent called it "one of the most useful and beautiful trees of the forests of eastern North America."

Eight years later, keepers at the Bronx Zoological Park noticed their chestnuts' bark dying in patches. A New York Botanical Garden mycologist identified a fungus nobody had seen before, which had arrived on imported Asian trees. It moved twenty to fifty miles a year. By about 1950, several billion chestnuts were dead.

The species isn't quite gone. The roots of many trees survive and keep sending up sprouts, which usually die back before they can flower, and researchers have spent decades trying to bring back a tree that can resist the blight. If your grandparents had a barn or a dresser made of chestnut, you've seen what the old forest was made of.

  1. 1896Faxon draws the chestnut for Sargent's Silva.
  2. 1904Chestnut blight is found at the Bronx Zoological Park.
  3. c. 1950Several billion trees are dead across the eastern forest.
  4. TodayRoot sprouts survive; researchers work to restore a blight-resistant tree.

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