Seems like I remember hearing about that stand in Georgia, now that you mention it. I don't have any first hand experience with American chestnut (it's native range never made it this far west), byt I've done quite a bit of work on the Ozark chinquapin, the chestnut's smaller cousin. The chinquapins here were hit by the blight in the mid-40's and were hammered pretty hard. I have only found one tree that was old enough to have been mature at the time that blight hit this region. Chinquapins seem to have quite a bit more inherent resistance to blight than the chestnuts do. A fairly decent percentage survive long enough to reproduce, and some natural seedling establishment is occuring. If given enough time, I am confident that natural selection will result in blight-resistent trees. As for the blight-stricken trees re-sprouting from the root collar, they can not do this indefinately. I have found several dozen trees that the root systems eventually starved out after 3 or 4 cycles of die back and re-sprouting.
