Chestnut mystery

It rained all day again, and Stasia wound up at my daughter's, so, with a bit of unexpected time and a lot of work to do, I never did get outside to walk and capture the day. But I did get a chance to review the images of our hike yesterday, and in going through them, I had to confront a genuine mystery. At the Don Henne Point, very close to the stone bench crafted in his honor, I had noticed something very strange on the ground as I bent down to try to find sticks for my granddaughter to throw: Chestnut husks. Their presence came as a complete surprise. I had been out to the Point numerous times since my first visit to the refuge last June, and in all that time, I never once spotted a Chestnut, which used to be the most dominant tree in the East and is now a ghost—a victim of a horrific blight. Where the heck did these trees come from, and how have they managed to defy the odds and spawn a crop of chestnuts?