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Ectomycorrhizal characterization of an American chestnut ( Castanea dentata )-dominated community in Western Wisconsin

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Abstract

Circa 1900, a farmer from the eastern US planted 11 American chestnut (Castanea dentata) seeds on a newly established farm near West Salem in western Wisconsin. These trees were very successful, producing a large stand of over 6,000 trees. Since this area is well outside the natural range of chestnut, these trees remained free from chestnut blight until 1987. In the West Salem stand, chestnuts are the dominant species of a mixed forest community, reminiscent of the chestnut–oak ecosystems of pre-1900 Appalachia. To identify putative mycorrhizal associates of chestnut in this unique forest, our approach was twofold: (1) an extensive fruiting body survey was conducted for four seasons that yielded approximately 100 putative mycorrhizal species and (2) a belowground molecular approach was used to generate DNA sequences of the internal transcribed spacer region from ectomycorrhizae. Unexpectedly, chestnut did not appear to be the dominant underground ectomycorrhizal-forming plant species. This study highlights the need to identify the plant host species when conducting belowground molecular-based surveys and provides preliminary identification of ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with a disjunct stand of American chestnut.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Dolores Rhyme and Ron Bockenhauer families for allowing access to the West Salem chestnut site. We thank Daniel Kinney, Sean Westmoreland, Nik Zitomer, Adam Gusse, Kelsea Jewel, and Bernadette O’Reilly, participants of the 2001 Smith foray and 2005 NAMA foray, for their help with collections, especially Andrew Methven, Karen Nakasone, James Scott, Rosanne Healy, Bart Buyck, Patrick Leacock, Wyatt Gaswick, and Heather Hallen-Adams. Michael Abler and Meredith Thomsen reviewed an earlier version of this manuscript. This work was partially funded by the American Chestnut Foundation and the Graduate Student Research Service and Education Leadership Grant Program at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, La Crosse, WI, 54601, USA

    Jonathan M. Palmer & Thomas J. Volk

  2. Center for Forest Mycology Research, USDA Forest Service, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Daniel L. Lindner

  3. 3465 Microbial Sciences, 1550 Linden Dr., Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Jonathan M. Palmer

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  1. Jonathan M. Palmer
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Correspondence to Jonathan M. Palmer.

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Table S1

Fruiting body collections of putatively mycorrhizal species from the West Salem chestnut stand and their sequence accession numbers. (DOC 143 kb)

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Palmer, J.M., Lindner, D.L. & Volk, T.J. Ectomycorrhizal characterization of an American chestnut ( Castanea dentata )-dominated community in Western Wisconsin. Mycorrhiza 19, 27–36 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-008-0200-7

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