Sweet Chestnut Tree

When I moved to Sweden, I noticed quite a difference in the plants that grow here in the wild, compared to in England. There are blueberry and Lingon plants everywhere, but not a blackberry in sight. I found blue and white wood anemones, but not a single bluebell anywhere. There are lots more pine trees, but the only horse chestnut trees are found in parks and roadsides. I haven't found one horse chestnut tree in the forests and not a sweet chestnut tree to be seen anywhere. When I asked why these plants and trees are not found in this part of Sweden (Borlänge, Dalarna), I was told that they didn't grow here. Well that's not true as I found out when I tried to grow these plants and trees in my garden. It might not be easy, but it can be done. The chestnut in the photo above (Oct 2011) was grown indoors from a nut that I had in my fridge. It was one of several that started to shoot and I potted up. I think I planted 3 or 4 outside when the spring came. This one is the only one still alive. What usually happened was that the top of the plant would either die back or be eaten by deer and new growth each spring would come from much lower down the stem. Had I protected the tree from the cold winters and deer, it probably would have done much better. Anyway, as the years went by, the roots got stronger and the tree grew more each year and now the top does not die back, but I do have to protect the tree from deer with wire netting.

This is how the tree looked at midsummer 2015 and as you can see, I don't have any protection around the tree during the summer. Unfortunately, the next summer, a deer decided to rub it's antlers against the tree, causing a lot of damage and almost completely removing the bark around the middle of the tree. There was just a thin strip of bark left at the back of the tree. All the information I could find about such damage said that the tree would die, at least above the stripped bark. The tree seemed ok and I hoped that the bark at the back of the tree would be enough to keep it alive, until I noticed that the bark had dried out and cracked in two. I read up about doing a bridge graft - grafting a small branch across the damaged area, but I didn't have a long enough branch to do it. In the end, I decided the only option was to tape over the damage and cross my fingers.



The tree grew as if nothing had happened. The tape provided a warm, damp environment, which allowed the tiny strip of cambium layer to quickly increase in size and almost grew halfway around the tree. When I removed the tape, this is what I found...

The cambium growth looked very thick and healthy, but where the new growth hadn't reached, the bare wood had a bit of black mold. I decided that it would be best to leave the tape off over the winter. I wrapped some wire netting around the trunk and at the top of the tree to protect it from deer and waited for winter.