Fraxinus excelsior Seeds | Tree Weeping Ash
LATIN NAME: Fraxinus excelsior
COMMON NAME: European Ash, Weeping Ash, Common Ash
Plant Profile
The European ash keeps its own calendar. It is among the last broadleaves to open its leaves in spring, and among the first to shed them in autumn, so a stand of ash looks bare while the oaks are still green and green while the hazels are still bare. That timing, more than any single feature, is how a forester learns to read the woodland.
Fraxinus excelsior is a large deciduous tree of the olive family, reaching past thirty metres on good ground with a tall, straight trunk and grey, fissured bark. Its opposite, pinnate leaves carry seven to thirteen oval, toothed leaflets, and its winged keys hang in loose panicles that give the winter tree a fine, lacy silhouette. The flowers open before the leaves and release a light pollen that is a well-known seasonal trigger for hay fever across northern Europe.
The leaf arrangement is opposite on the twig, which already separates ash from most other broadleaves, and the blade is divided into an odd number of toothed leaflets. The count of seven to thirteen is a useful field mark, because the similar manna ash runs to fewer leaflets and a different bud colour.
The fungus enters through the leaves and moves into the twigs and stem, producing diamond-shaped lesions and crown dieback that can kill a mature tree within a few seasons. Some individuals show tolerance, and those survivors are now the focus of every breeding programme worth the name.
In Ireland the hurley stick is still turned from ash, and across Europe the same wood went into ladder rungs, oars and chair frames that had to flex. The combination of strength and spring is the reason the tree was planted as much for the workshop as for the woodlot.
Science & Biotechnology
Ash is dioecious: male and female flowers open on different trees, both without petals, both reduced to what the wind can carry. A single female tree set near a male will load its branches with keys, while an isolated female may fruit lightly or not at all, which matters if you are growing for seed. The winged samara, a single wing with one seed, spins to the ground and drifts on the wind, scattering thousands of little helicopters in a good year.
Researchers collect scion from tolerant trees and use micropropagation to multiply the few that shrug off infection, then trial their offspring in the field. It is slow work, because a tree must be watched for years, but it is the only route back to a self-sowing ash population.
Uses & Benefits
The headline story of the last two decades is ash dieback, caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, which has killed a large share of the mature ash across Europe. The loss reshaped hedgerows, woodlots and parks, and it turned the tree from a common weed-species into a conservation concern almost overnight.
Ash wood is pale, straight-grained and remarkably tough, which is why it was the traditional choice for tool handles, sports goods and bentwood furniture. A broken handle in the hand is a failure of the user, not the ash, and that reputation kept the timber in demand long after the tree fell from fashion.
Ash coppices well, sending up straight poles from the stump that were cut on a cycle for firewood and small timber. The young poles were also used green for bending, which suited the old chair bodgers who worked in the wood rather than the town, and the pale, clean timber was prized wherever a curve had to hold.
Growing from Seed
Fresh ash seed has a deep dormancy and is best given a cold, moist rest before sowing, then started in an open seedbed. The seedling is quick once it moves, and it wants full light to make a straight pole rather than a branchy shrub.
Mix the keys with damp sand and hold them cold for the winter, then sow when the soil warms and the first true leaves have opened on the seedling. Prick out before the taproot bends in the pot, because a kinked root makes a crooked tree.
Plant at close spacing if you want a clean trunk, because competition for light pulls the stem up straight. Thin over the years so the final tree has room to branch, and keep the base clear of grass for the first season or two so the young ash is not smothered at the start.
Our Take
Ash is a tree for the long view, and right now the long view means picking tolerant stock. If you like olive-family trees, compare the olive, the early lilac, the sweet osmanthus, and the forsythia.
Related Reading
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