VEAZIE – The town soon will be home to the most northern American chestnut tree orchard in the United States.

As part of its detailed forest management plan completed in June 2000, the town has worked to conserve two parcels. As the fifth American chestnut tree orchard in Maine, approximately 2 acres will be devoted to the project.

“We were very pleased when Veazie said they were interested in having an orchard out there,” Glen Rea, vice president of the Maine Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, said Tuesday. “The timing couldn’t have been better.”

Rea of Bangor will act as manager for the Veazie orchard, where he said 200 to 300 trees are scheduled to be planted in May.

“The work that we do here is very important because we’re at the edge of the natural range,” Rea said.

The only cost to the city will be mowing the property, according to Town Manager Bill Reed.

Membership fees, donations to the foundation and grants will pay for the planting process and other maintenance, Rea said.

“I practice forestry on the weekends, so this is perfect for me,” said Rea, a stockbroker at Means Investment in Bangor.

The stock market was kind to Rea early in his career, and at 37, he and his wife were ready to stop moving and settle down, he said.

The stockbroker told his wife he had always wanted to be a Maine forester and the couple moved to Bangor. In 1981, Rea received a forestry degree from the University of Maine and has been a weekend warrior forester for the last 22 years.

The American chestnut has become one of his specialties in the last five years, since his wife signed him up as a member of the foundation.

“It’s called the ‘Redwood of the East,'” Rea said.

After blight destroyed nearly all of the American chestnut trees in the United States about 100 years ago, the federal government started a breeding project with the Chinese chestnut and the American chestnut, but gave up in the 1960s.

“They didn’t have the knowledge like we do today about genetics,” Rea said.

In the early 1980s, the project was started again, and the American chestnut is about two to three years away from being reintroduced to U.S. forests.

“We’re almost there right now,” Rea said. “Not in Maine, but in Virginia.”

The goal in Veazie is to put trees from the orchard into the Maine woods by the year 2020.

To create an American chestnut tree, pollen from an orchard in Virginia is used to pollinate a seed. The Chinese chestnut line of the tree is immune to the fungus that caused the 1904 blight, so it is used in the first breeding process.

“A key part of this is there’s no genetic engineering involved,” Rea said, noting that in 1,000 years, nature likely would accomplish the same thing the foundation is trying to do.

The American chestnut is one of the most delicious nuts, he explained, and rodents like to dig up the seeds. The American version also isn’t as winter hardy as its Chinese counterpart. Those factors make the first three years of germination the most difficult.

Rea said he will be looking for volunteers to help with the Veazie orchard once planting begins in May, and he plans to post updates on the Maine American Chestnut Foundation’s Web site at www.me-acf.org.

“We have really quite a challenge,” he said. “We’ll need lots of help.”