But these are not just any trees.

These seedlings mark what researchers hope is the return of the American chestnut.

The 1,400 trees planted at two reclaimed strip mines in eastern Ohio are the fruit of a painstaking breeding project to produce an American chestnut resistant to the blight that wiped out the tree in the early years of the 20th century.

"We spent a lot of time and effort to make sure they live," said Brian McCarthy, a forest ecologist at Ohio University. "We spent almost a half-hour planting every single seedling, and anyone who saw us would think we're crazy."

Crews took their time planting the 2-foot-tall seedlings, spreading mulch, watering, fertilizing, and surrounding each one with a 4-foot-tall chicken-wire fence.

American chestnuts once were true forest monarchs, many growing 120 feet tall and more than 15 feet in diameter.

Lightweight and rot-resistant, chestnut wood was used to build homes and craft furniture and musical instruments.

The forests were thick with them. So thick that it was said a squirrel could travel from Mississippi to Maine via chestnut trees without touching the ground.

And then they were gone. More than 4 billion of them.

An airborne fungus, which entered the United States on chestnut trees imported from Asia, raced through the chestnuts, killing their food-transporting tissues and essentially starving the trees.

The fungus was discovered in 1904 at the Bronx Zoo, and by the 1930s, it had wiped out nearly every chestnut in its range, especially ridge tops, east of the Mississippi River.

"It was that fast. All of them," McCarthy said.

The blight was just one hammer blow on what was arguably one of the most magnificent forests in the world when European settlers arrived.

In the past 200 years, the woods have been subjected to a continual assault from foreign invaders: gypsy moths, Dutch elm disease, and the latest, the emerald ash borer, which threatens to wipe out tens of billions of ash trees.

Scientists have been able to fight back against the chestnut blight, because here and there, a tree had just the right combination of genes that allowed it to resist attack.

The effort to create a resistant American chestnut has been spearheaded by the American Chestnut Foundation. Working at the foundation's breeding farm in Meadowview, Va., scientists have painstakingly crossed trees grown from resistant American chestnuts with Chinese chestnuts, which are immune to the blight.

Ohio's new chestnuts are among the first fruits of the effort.

The technique, known as backcrossing, has been used by plant geneticists to produce hybrids since the 1920s. But it's a far more time-consuming technique than producing tomatoes or petunias.

Success depends on finding enough nuts from resistant trees. Those must be planted and nurtured until their trees produce flowers that can be crossed with Chinese chestnuts.

If all works as planned, those cross-bred trees will show resistance.

There are 26,000 trees in various stages of breeding in Virginia, according to foundation spokeswoman Meghan Jordan.The first cross produced a half-Chinese chestnut and half-American, said Paul Sisco, a geneticist with the foundation.

Each succeeding cross boosts the traits of the American chestnut, producing a tree that looks more American and is, hopefully, more blight resistant.

Sisco figures the trees planted in Ohio are one-eighth Chinese, and that a later crossbreed now being evaluated at the farm is one-sixteenth Chinese.

Saplings are tested by injecting them with fungus.

As trees mature, they produce more seeds. Scientists collected a total of 80 to 100 seed nuts from the most resistant trees in each of the past two years. They hope to reach 10,000 by 2012 as trees grow and more trees begin to bear nuts.

Eventually, seeds from resistant trees will be sent to different regions. Ohio is expected to receive more.

Sisco said these trees will produce seeds better acclimated to specific regions.

"Everybody and his brother want some of these seeds," Sisco said.

While no one is ready to say the American chestnut is back, McCarthy said he is hopeful that these new trees planted at the two reclaimed strip mines herald the return of the chestnut in Ohio.

"They should last as long as a mature chestnut tree (would live)," he said.

The trees also must be able to compete in the forest.

Ohio's test sites are reclaimed strip mines at the Tri-Valley Wildlife Area in eastern Muskingum County and the Jockey Hollow Wildlife Area in Harrison County.

There are 1,200 trees at Tri-Valley and 200 at Jockey Hollow.

The chestnut seedlings are part of an experiment looking at new ways to reclaim strip mines. Traditionally, they are graded to remove high walls, and their topsoil is replaced, compacted and covered with a thick blanket of grass.

Although that method is great for reducing erosion, it makes it nearly impossible to grow forests. Seedlings can't penetrate the soil, and those that do are destroyed by periodic grass fires, said Mike Reynolds, a biologist with the Ohio Division of Wildlife.

The same phenomenon occurs naturally on prairies, which depend on periodic fires to burn off trees and other competing vegetation.

Reynolds said he doesn't know of any reclaimed mines where natural woodlands have replaced grass. The result is that the forests of Appalachia have been fragmented by thousands of acres of man-made grasslands.

When the chestnuts were planted at Tri-Valley, workers removed several acres of sod in order to plant. Researchers will compare chestnuts planted in the cleared areas with those in the grasses.

At Jockey Hollow, grass was never planted. Topsoil that was removed during mining was returned and dumped in mounds about 20 feet in diameter and about 6 feet tall.

The chestnuts were planted on the mounds with about 33,000 oaks and other trees.

The experiment is being watched closely by coal companies.

"The mounds look like a dinosaur's back," said Marcie Moore of the Oxford Mining Co. in Coshocton, which is cooperating in the planting.

"We believe there will be cost savings. We don't have labor or fuel costs for extra grading and fertilizing." The technique has worked at experimental sites in Virginia and Kentucky.

McCarthy said the technique offers a chance for forests to again thrive.

"We want to learn how to accelerate this back into a forested environment."

mlafferty@dispatch.com