The Large Leafed Saplings in The Foreground are the forest's ever continuing efforts at regrowing the original American Chestnut that disappeared from the forests when I was a pre-schooler

"More than a century ago, nearly four billion American chestnut trees were growing in the eastern U.S. They were among the largest, tallest, and fastest-growing trees. The wood was rot-resistant, straight-grained, and suitable for furniture, fencing, and building. The nuts fed billions of wildlife, people and their livestock. It was almost a perfect tree, that is, until a blight fungus killed it more than a century ago. The chestnut blight has been called the greatest ecological disaster to strike the world’s forests in all of history."

https://www.acf.org/the-american-chestnut/history-american-chestnut/