WHITE ASH 



(Fraxinus Americana) 



THIS tree is generally called white or gray ash, or simply ash. 

 American ash is a translation of its botanical name and is not often 

 used in business transactions in this country. In some parts of the 

 South the term cane ash is occasionally employed, but there seems to be 

 no agreement among those who use the name as to what it means. This 

 is the common ash in the lumber trade. There are more than a dozen 

 species in the United States, but white ash goes to market in larger 

 amounts than all others together. This is known in a general way, bu t 

 exact figures cannot be given, because statistics of the cut of different 

 species of ash are not kept separate. 



The range of this tree covers at least a million square miles, and all 

 or part of every state east of the Mississippi river and west of it from 

 Nebraska to Texas. It is reported cut for lumber in thirty states. The 

 various ashes are lumbered in thirty-nine states. Ash does not occur in 

 pure stands but is scattered in forests of other species, sometimes 

 growing in small clumps. It is difficult to name an average size for 

 the tree, because climate and soil control the growth over a large area 

 where conditions vary. Trees 120 feet high and six feet in diameter are 

 said to have stood in the primeval forests in the lower Ohio valley; but 

 logs four feet through are seldom seen now. Trees seventy or eighty 

 feet high and three in diameter are above the average in any region 

 where this tree is now lumbered. Some of the old planted trees of New 

 England are five or six feet through, and are finely proportioned, but 



growing as they do in the open, they hayp larger prn\y" c timn (* i 



in forest trees. 



All species of ash have compound leaves, and those of white ash are 

 from eight to twelve inches long. The under sides of the leaflets are 

 white, and some persons have this fact in mind when they call the species 

 white ash, while others refer to the bark, and still others to the wood. It 

 is a characteristic of the tree that most of the leaves grow near the ends 

 of the limbs. For that reason the crown appears open when viewed from 

 below, and the larger limbs and branches are naked. The leaves demand 

 light, and they arrange themselves on the extremities of the limbs to get 

 it. When the tree is crowded, it sheds its lower limbs and its crown rises 

 rapidly until it reaches abundance of light. This produces long trunks in 

 forests. 



The boles are often not quite straight, but have several slight 

 crooks, yet keep close to a general perpendicular line. That form is due 



400 





