appear as living stumps.
Since the 1920s, scientists have
been trying to develop a blight-
resistant hybrid American chestnut
by crossing Chinese and Japanese
chestnuts with the American chest-
nut to develop a tree as genetically,
physically and aesthetically similar as
possible to the American chestnut,
but blight resistant, and reintroduce
it back into American forests to
revive this living icon. They had little
success. However, in recent years
the progress of genetic technology
has increased this possibility.
The key to the increased suc-
cess of this revival has come about
through utilization of the genetic
concept of "backcro