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Trees, Shown to the Children

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<h2>PLATE IX THE ASH</h2> “If the oak before the ash, Then you’ll only have a splash; If the ash before the oak, Then you’re sure to have a soak.” —Old Saying. If the Oak is well named the King of the woods, to the Ash belongs the honour of being called Queen, the wood’s fairest. She is a queen with an ancient history. In the dim long ago there must have been Ash trees, for we read that the great spear of Achilles was an “ashen spear”; also, that the gods held council under the boughs of a great Ash tree: on its highest branches sat an eagle; round its root a serpent lay coiled; and a tiny squirrel ran up and down the branches carrying messages from one to the other. In much later times the Ash tree was held to have magic powers of healing. Sick babies were said to be cured if they passed through a cleft made in its trunk; and there are many tales of men and animals who recovered from illness on touching an Ash twig gathered from a tree in which a shrew mouse had been buried. Nowadays we have grown so wise that we think differently about these things, and we love the Ash tree because of its beauty, and are grateful for the many ways in which the wood is useful to us. You should try to find an Ash tree (1) in early spring. It is one of the easiest trees to recognise before it is clothed in leaves. The trunk is very straight, and has none of the knobs and bosses which grow on the Oak and Elm tree trunks. When the Ash tree is still young the bark is a pale grey colour—ash-colour, we call it—and it is very smooth. But as the tree grows older the bark cracks into many irregular upright ridges, which remind you of the rimples left by the waves on a sandy sea-shore. At first the lower branches grow straight out from the trunk, but soon they curve gracefully downwards; then they rise again, and the tips point upward toward the sky. Notice the tips of these branches—they are quite different from all other tree tips. In an Ash tree you will not see a network of delicate branching twigs outlined against the sky. Each branch ends in a stout pale grey twig, which is slightly flattened at the tip, as if it had been pinched between two fingers when still soft. Beyond this flattened tip you see two fat black buds (4), and there are smaller black buds at the sides of the twig. It is these curious black buds at the tips and on the sides of the twig which will make it easy for you to distinguish the Ash tree from every other. Long after the other trees have put on their young green leaves the Ash tree stands bare and leafless, waiting till the frost and cold winds are gone before its black buds will unfold. Then out it comes, flowers first. The sooty buds at the sides of the twig open, and you see that they have dark brown linings, and that in the middle of each bud there lies a thick bunch of purple stamen heads (6), crowded together like grains of purple corn; these are the Ash tree flowers (8). Ash tree flowers have no petals and no sepals; they have only a green, bottle-shaped seed-vessel (7), which stands between two stamens with pale green stalks and fat purple-coloured heads. Sometimes there is not even a seed-vessel; you may find nothing but a crowded bunch of purply stamens. This latter kind of Ash tree cannot produce any fruit. In a few weeks these stamens shrivel and the purple heads fall off. The seed-vessels, too, become very different. They change into long flat green wings, which hang each from its own stalk in a cluster at the end or from the side of the branch. These silky green wings are called “keys” (3), or in some places, “spinners”; at one end they are notched, and at the other, close to the stalk, lies the fruit. Long after the Ash tree leaves are withered and fallen you can see these bunches of “keys,” grown brown and shrivelled, still clinging to the branches. When wintry weather comes they are torn off by the wind, and the winged seed, spinning round and round in the air, is carried a long distance. You will see Ash trees growing high up on rocky precipices, where only the birds or the wind could have left the seed. By the month of May, when the keys of the Ash are fully formed, the green leaves (2) begin to appear. They are beautiful feathery leaves, full of lightness, and grace, and strength. Each leaf is made up of from four to eleven pairs of leaflets, shaped like a lance, with toothed edges, and these are placed opposite each other on a central stalk: there is nearly always a single leaflet at the end. The leaves are pale green, and when they first open you see a soft browny down on the leaf ribs, but this soon wears off. They droop gracefully from the twigs, which you can now see require to be stout and strong to carry such large wind-tossed feathers. But the Ash tree leaves are among the first to fall. Whenever the cold winds come they wither, and a single night of frost will strew them in hundreds on the ground. Where the leaf stalk joined the twig you will see a curious scar (5) shaped like a horse-shoe, and next year a black bud will appear inside this scar. The Ash tree will live for several hundred years. It is not fully grown up till it is forty or fifty years old, and till then you will not find any bunches of keys, with their seeds, growing on the tree. <hr class="tb" /> Plate X <ANTIMG src="images/i_075.jpg" alt="" /> THE FIELD MAPLE 1. Field Maple in Autumn2. Leaf Spray 3. Flower Spike4. Fruit <hr class="tb" /> Notice that the ground beneath the branches of the Ash tree is usually bare. Many of its roots spread out to a great distance close below the surface, and they are so greedy, and require so much nourishment for the tree, that there is none left for other plants. Some farmers think that the raindrops which drip from the feathery Ash leaves are hurtful to other plants, so they are unwilling to plant Ash trees in their fields and hedgerows. The wood of the Ash is very valuable, and will bring as much money as that of the Oak or Elm. It is used for all kinds of work—for furniture and for ship-building, and for making wheels and poles, and it lasts well and does not readily split. <hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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