CHAPTER XXI 



The Ash 



"Venus of the woods." 



— Gilpin. 



I imagine that few of my readers unless they be professional 

 botanists realize that our familiar ash of southeastern North Amer- 

 ica is a member of the olive family, or Oleaceae as it is known scien- 

 tifically. This family of plants which was named originally after 

 the Mediterranean olive — now extensively cultivated in Cahfomia — 

 contains a number of other particularly well known plants both 

 native and introduced from the old world that have long been 

 highly prized for ornamental planting. Among these the com- 

 monest are the Hlac, privet, syringa, forsythia and jasmine. The 

 devil-wood (Osmanthus) of our Gulf States, sometimes called the 

 American olive, is also a member of this family. 



The two principal areas of distribution of the existing ashes are 

 southeastern North America and southeastern Asia, although they 

 are by no means wanting in Europe or in the forested region of our 

 Pacific coast. There are about the same number of species of 

 ash in China as there are in North America, but ours are usually 

 the larger trees and furnish more valuable wood. In addition to 

 the ash there are two other members of the olive family that are 

 common to China and our southeastern states. These are the 

 fringe-tree (Chionanthus) and the devil-wood (Osmanthus) — 

 the flowers of the latter being utihzed for scenting tea in China. 



Obviously the ash, fringe-tree, and devil-wood did not originate 

 simultaneously or at different times independently in Asia and 

 North America, so that there must have been a time in the past 

 when the lands lying between these remote areas were traversed 

 by the ancestors of the living forms that now inhabit them. On a 

 subsequent page we shall see that this is clearly indicated in the 

 case of the geological history of the ash, and the presence of a fossil 



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