PORTLAND – “Under a spreading chestnut tree” are the first words of “The Village Blacksmith,” but today’s generation of poets would be hard-pressed to find the kind of tree that inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

American chestnut trees in Maine and the rest of the eastern United States fell victim to an Asian fungal blight that arrived in this country a century ago. Today, only a few of the trees survive.

Hundreds of Maine schoolchildren from 30 schools hope to make up for some of that loss by taking part in a project intended to restore the tall, majestic chestnut to the state’s landscape.

Students in the American Chestnut Project will spend the winter seeking landowners’ permission to plant seedlings next May.

The project is sponsored by the Maine Commission for Community Service and the American Chestnut Foundation, which will provide the seeds.

“Hopefully, these kids can come back to Wiscasset years from now, when they are old and gray, to see the fruits of what they planted,” said Cheryle Joslin, a reading teacher at Wiscasset Middle School.

American chestnuts once dominated the hills and mountains of the eastern United States. Chestnuts were roasted and eaten. The wood was used for furniture and aromatic firewood. Chemicals extracted from the tree were used to cure leather and dye fabric.

“This tree was really a critical part of our country’s development,” said Annie Houle of Yarmouth, a project consultant for the state.

By 1950, however, most American chestnuts had succumbed to blight.

The Maine chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation has identified about 100 locations in the state where American chestnut trees still grow. Most of those locations have only one tree, said Eric Evans, the chapter president.

Evans, a compost biologist, admits the trees children plant next spring may live only for 10 to 15 years. But he said they might live longer because the fungus is not as prevalent as before.

Evans and other chestnut-lovers have created breeding orchards where they grow what they hope will become blight-resistant trees.

“We are trying to build a movement to reverse what amounts to one of the worst ecological disasters in American history,” he said.