MERRIMACK – Years from now, when American chestnut trees once again line local streets, one Merrimack tree might be to thank.

This particular chestnut tree, which sits at the entrance to Merrimack’s Community Hospice House on Naticook Road, gave birth this fall to at least 50 nuts that researchers will use in their efforts to develop a disease-resistant strain that will help return the chestnut population to its former glory.

The trees once made up a quarter of the forests along the Eastern seaboard until they were virtually wiped out by the blight during the 20th century.

Researchers and volunteers worked last week to collect the chestnuts, and they will replant seeds from the Merrimack nuts in the months sometime next spring hopes of producing more resistant strains, volunteers said this week.

“Our tree did very well. Better than we expected,” Curt Laffin, a retired ranger and a volunteer with the American Chestnut Foundation, said Tuesday, four days after he helped to remove the chestnuts.

“It’s a small tree, so to get better than 50 (chestnuts) is a good thing,” he said. “These could help a lot.”

The Merrimack chestnuts, like others around the state and the country, are born from a special type of pollen, cross-bred with Chinese chestnut trees, which are naturally resistant to the blight.

Researchers pollinated the trees this summer, painting the ferns with the pollen in July and then covering the flowers with paper bags to prevent them from being fertilized.

After giving them time to mature, the researchers returned last Wednesday to remove the chestnuts from the tree, and they quickly transferred the nuts to the American Chestnut Foundation research facility in Burlington, Vt., where they will spend the winter.

Once the spring arrives and the ground warms, researchers will plant seeds from the nuts this spring in a tree orchard, according to Kendra Gurney, regional science coordinator for the chestnut foundation’s New England branch.

“We’re not sure exactly where (the seeds) will go yet. But it’ll be probably somewhere in (New Hampshire),” Gurney said Tuesday. “We’ll probably bring them back close to home.”

In New Hampshire, 400 trees are currently growing at a site in Peterborough, and foundation officials are developing another test site in Hollis.

Last year, researchers extracted nearly 200 chestnuts from a tree in Hudson. They had planned to plant the seeds this spring in a Vermont orchard, but the orchard wasn’t ready. They planted those seeds last month.

“We’re hoping they really turn out,” said Laffin, a Hudson resident.

“It’s been a good year,” said Gurney, from the American Chestnut Foundation. “Having two pretty solid lines from that part of New Hampshire helps us represent that part of the state.”

Together, researchers and volunteers hope this is just the beginning. The Merrimack tree, covered with cracks and lesions, shows signs of giving way to the blight, but researchers are hopeful it will yield another harvest next year.

“I’m hopeful,” Laffin said Tuesday. “It treated us very well this year. We’ll have to see what happens.”

Jake Berry can be reached at 594-6402 or jberry@nashuatelegraph.com.