Everybody’s heard about chestnuts roasting on an open fire, especially at this time of year, but how many of us have actually ever had any?

Apparently, there’s a reason for that. According to the American Chestnut Foundation, the American chestnut tree once reigned over 200 million acres of eastern woodlands from Maine to Florida, and from the Piedmont west to the Ohio Valley, until succumbing to a lethal fungus infestation, known as the chestnut blight, during the first half of the 20th century. They estimate that four billion American chestnuts were destroyed by the disease.

The American Chestnut Foundation was started in 1983 by a group of plant scientists with the goal of developing a blight-resistant American chestnut tree through research and breeding. Obviously, that requires funding and you can help by giving that hard-to-buy-for person on your Christmas list a really special gift this year – an Annual Sponsor membership to The American Chestnut Foundation worth two potentially blight-resistant chestnut trees!

I am not kidding. According to ACF, a gift membership includes a subscription to the bi-monthly magazine, access to their most advanced, potentially blight-resistant Restoration Chestnuts for your own planting, and expert advice on growing and caring for American chestnut trees.

If that is not cool enough, they even have a whole chestnut gift store – really! There’s books, posters, prints, handcrafted stuff made from chestnut wood, t-shirts, hats and more. Check it out at shop.acf.org. Guaranteed to be a Christmas gift they will never expect!