When he was nine, Thomas Rudolph and his Morningside Elementary classmates in the fourth grade pushed chestnut seeds into pots to see how fast they would grow.

The seeds were a special hybrid hoping to restore the long-gone species to Atlanta. Chestnuts grow fast, and by summer, the foot tall seedlings outgrew the classroom. You can eat the nuts these trees will grow before you get out of high school, the Chestnut Foundation teacher promised.

They did grow fast. The seedlings were two feet tall by the fall, when Thomas and other scouts from the Haygood Methodist troop planted them on the South Fork of Peachtree Creek on a steep slope.

WABE’s Myke Johns brought a microphone, recorded the excitement and broadcast it to all Atlanta. Thomas remembers that lots of people thought it was pretty cool.

Eighteen or so of the young trees made it through that first winter. But the excitement of the experiment began to fade as Thomas turned ten. Then eleven. The promise of tasting real chestnuts growing on the trees began to grow less important.

Middle school. High School and sports. Science class and lacrosse, ten years passed.

Then, this winter, a senior in high school, Thomas decided to check on the trees. He and his mom Monica walked from the Armand Park trailhead to the steep bank he remembered from ten years earlier.

They climbed, pulling aside wintery vines, looking hard at bare branches.

Then, overhead, a few thin leaves waved a hello. Thomas wondered if they were looking for him. There, in plain sight, he found the biggest of the five surviving chestnut trees.

Excited, Thomas leaned in.

As if waiting for him, spiny chestnut hulls lay in the leaf litter. By his feet he saw the first harvest of chestnuts from the trees his class began as seeds.

He didn’t find any nuts left, though. Chipmunks, possums, all kinds of chestnut-loving wildlife found them first. Still, he filled his fists with the prickly hulls and put his hand around the trunk of the tree. The trunk was thicker than he could grip. His smile was radiant.

That Chestnut Foundation scientist had been right. In ten years under the right conditions, chestnut trees can mature into nut bearing food sources.

Thomas is off to Auburn University in the fall. The trees he and his classmates brought to life will be here when he comes back home to visit. If he times it right and gets there this fall before the chipmunks and squirrels, he can taste the chestnuts himself.