White Ash (Fraxinus Americana, Linn.)—A tall, stately tree, 75 to 125 feet high, with straight, columnar trunk reaching 6 feet in diameter, and high pyramidal or round head of erect, stout branches. Bark closely furrowed into many deep, diamond shaped ridges and hollows, dark brown or grey, thick. Wood reddish brown, with paler sap wood, tough, elastic, coarse, heavy, hard, not durable in soil, becoming brittle with age. Buds smooth, dark brown, plump, leathery, on pale twigs. Leaves, opposite, pinnate, 8 to 12 inches long, of 5 to 9 leaflets, usually 7, appearing late, falling early ; autumn colour purple or yellow; leaflets stalked, smooth when mature, dark green above, pale, often silvery beneath, oblong-lanceolate, with entire or wavy margins. Flowers, May before leaves, dicecious, in panicles, at first compact, later long and loose; staminate purple, later yellow, stamens 3 on short filaments; pistillate purple, vase shaped, with elongated style and spreading, divided stigma. Fruit, September, slender, dart-like keys, 1 to 2 inches long, pointed, wing twice the length of the round, tapering body. Preferred habitat, rich, moist soil. Distribution, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to Florida; west to Ontario, Minnesota and Texas. Uses: An admirable park and street tree. Wood used for agricultural 1 implements, frames of vehicles, tool handles, oars, furniture, interior finish of houses, stairs, and fuel.
The white ash is one of the trees that holds its own in our Eastern forests, the peer of the loftiest oak or sycamore or black walnut. Narrow as its head is when crowded in the company of other trees, it can broaden out into a canopy of benignant shade when it has room to grow naturally. The white of its leaf linings enters into its name. The pale twigs and bark also justify its name.
The tree is a column of grey in winter, topped by upright branches and erect, rigid twigs, set with mathematical accuracy in opposite pairs. There is little grace in such a tree until June has covered it with supple new shoots, and the leaves droop and flutter in sun and wind. Then the white ash stands transformed, and all through the summer the pistillate trees are hung with bountiful clusters of pale or rosy keys that dance and gleam and fairly dazzle the eyes of the beholder.
Staminate trees ordinarily shed their flowers as soon as the bursting pollen cells have turned their purple to gold. A little mite has discovered some virtue in these flower clusters, and mite families innumerable are raised therein, causing the dis torted blossoms to remain in place, though withered. I once found an old man carefully gathering these bunches in winter, thinking them to be seed of the tree. He looked incredulous when I tried to dispel his illusion, and a moment later resumed his task.
In the South the white ash languishes, is undersized, and its wood is of poor quality. In the Northeastern and Central States
it is at its best, and is counted one of the most important of our American timber trees. It is probably put to more uses than any other species.
In cultivation, the small-fruited white ash (var. microcarpa, Gray) is often met with. The clustered darts are scarce one-half inch long.
Black Ash (Fraxinus nigra, Marsh.)—Slender, upright tree with narrow head, 5o to 90 feet high; twigs stout. Bark close textured, dark grey, with interlacing furrows; twigs smooth, grey, with pale lenticels. - Wood brown, soft, heavy, tough, splitting into annual layers along the porous spring wood. Buds broadly ovate, almost black, granular-pubescent; inner scales becoming leaf-like. Leaves in May, 12 to 16 inches long, of 7 to it oblong lanceolate leaflets, all but terminal one sessile; margins with incurving teeth, upper surfaces dark green, smooth; lower pale with rufous hairs in tufts along pale midribs; fall early, after turning rusty brown. Flowers, May, before leaves, dicecious, in axillary panicles; stamens dark purple with short filaments; pistils with long cleft purple stigmas, often with abortive stamens below. Fruit winged keys in open panicles, 8 to to inches long; seed flat, short, surrounded by wing which is broad, thin and conspicuously notched. Preferred habitat, deep, cold swamps and stream borders. Distribution, Newfoundland and north shore of Gulf of St. Lawrence to Manitoba; south to Delaware and the mountains of Virginia, southern Illinois, central Missouri, and northwestern Arkansas. Uses: Wood especially suited for baskets, chair bottoms and barrel hoops; also used for fencing and fuel, for cabinet work and furniture. Saplings used for hop and bean poles.
If you have learned to recognise an ash tree at sight, it is an easy matter to distinguish the black ash at any time of year. It is the slenderest of them all, rarely more than a foot in diameter, even though its height he over 5o feet. The trunk looks like a dark grey granite column, so even and close textured is its bark. In winter the blue-black buds are our best identification sign. They are only "exceeded in blackness" by the buds of the Euro pean ash (F. excelsior). Tennyson, describing the eyes of the gardener's daughter, uses this striking simile: "Black as ash buds in the front of March." The foliage is so dark green it looks black at a distance and the side leaflets have no stalks.
Like its European cousin, the black ash is unusually late in coming out in the spring. Often it is the middle of May before the black outer pair of bud scales fall, and the two inner pairs broaden and lengthen and turn green to help for a short season the opening leaves. As a rule the staminate flowers are on different trees from these bearing the pistillate, and rarely a few perfect ones.