‘Tis the season for roasting chestnuts. But in the US, native ones are almost gone

It’s been a very long time since vendors sold the American chestnut on city sidewalks. It’s no longer the variety whose smell some people associate with Christmastime as it wafts from street carts. Because it’s virtually extinct.

But memories of the American chestnut’s legacy keep resurfacing for the researchers who want to bring it back. They describe its wood that paneled the homes and schoolrooms of their grandparents, or the photographs of men on the street corners of old Baltimore, with hot bags of nuts cooked on charcoal.