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 Laura Davenport stands in a chestnut stump in the 1990s, Etowah County. Once abundant, the American chestnut is now nearly extinct. (Photograph by L.J. Davenport) In his 1842 poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used the chestnut tree to help define his blacksmith's qualities: "Under the spreading chestnut tree/The village smithy stands." Little did the poet know that in less than a century both blacksmiths and the chestnuts that spread protectively over them would be close to extinction.
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About the authorLarry Davenport holds a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Alabama. He is a professor of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Samford University in Birmingham, where he teaches courses on general botany, plant taxonomy, and wetlands. In 2007, he was named Alabama Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Dr. Davenport has contributed his Nature Journal column to Alabama Heritage since 1993. This column inspired his award-winning book Nature Journal (University of Alabama Press, 2010). Archives
October 1996
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