Science: Tree Medicine

The American chestnut tree used to flourish from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the Canadian frontier to North Carolina. It often reached a height of 100 feet, a ripe old age of 600 years. Today, where the once verdant chestnut forests stood, are scattered grey skeletons, a few scrubby little second growth trees. For Endothia parasitica, the chestnut fungus imported from Asia at the end of the last century, has systematically destroyed the American chestnut. Only a few stands are left in the Southern Appalachians and Endothia has started on them too.

Last week, John A. Casterline of Dover, N. J., a modest, patient man who loves trees, eagerly showed reporters four luxuriant chestnut trees on the New Jersey estate of Success Coach Walter Boughton Pitkin. Then he displayed two more in his own backyard. They had been struck with the blight, he said, but he had saved them with his new tannic acid treatment. Method of treatment is simple: on the theories currently held by tree experts, that: 1) the tannic acid of tree-sap is as actively disease-resistant as human blood; and 2) the circulatory system of a tree will by suction pressure carry medicine to diseased organs just as effectively as does the bloodstream, Tree Man John Casterline attached a rubber hose to the taproot (main root) of a chestnut tree, planted the other end in a gallon of tannic acid. Within a day, the acid working upward with the sap had begun to check the fungus. Once the parasite was killed, the trees began to flourish again. For protection the acid tanks were allowed to remain connected to the taproots for several months.

Experts last week admitted that John Casterline’s idea was scientifically sound, for modern tree healers have been injecting medicines directly into the trunks as well as packing fertilizers into the earth surrounding the roots. However, they withheld judgment pending further investigation. Said John Casterline, who has been doctoring trees for 20 years: “My wife and I decided to devote our lives to the curing of trees. We believe [our work] to be a great success. We have cured the chestnut blight . . . and in addition we believe we can cure most of the other tree diseases.”