260 THE ASHES 



The rapidly grown wood is of great value for many pur- 

 poses. For some uses it is superior to White Oak. It has 

 long been celebrated for its toughness and elasticity. Homer 

 armed his heroes of the Trojan War with ashen javelins 

 and gave his sailors ashen oars. The average lumber cut 

 from forest trees is hard, heavy, elastic, tough, strong, 

 fairly close-grained, but showing distinct annual rings, 

 with moderately plain distinction in density between spring 

 and summer wood. The color of the heartwood varies in 

 different trees from a light to a reddish brown, sometimes 

 strangely marked with splashes of darker and varying color 

 which run fantastically across the annual rings. The sap- 

 wood is thick and light-colored. The medullary rays are 

 small and inconspicuous. It is highly prized for agricult- 

 ural implements, carriagework, automobile bodies, handles, 

 the coal miner prefers an ash handle for his pick to all 

 other wood, oars, and all purposes where strength and 

 elasticity are required. It ranks next after Beech and 

 Maple for fuel. It is not durable in contact with the soil, 

 and the claim that it serves a good purpose for fence posts 

 is not founded on experience. Lumber cut from it does 

 not warp or check badly when properly piled, but logs cut 

 from it should be painted at the ends or promptly sawed 

 into lumber to avoid checks. It is quite long-lived, some- 

 times reaching an age of two hundred and seventy-five 

 years, but the wood in very old trees is liable to be brittle. 



While it will sprout from the stump when quite young, 

 that method of propagation cannot be depended upon. Old 

 trees never sprout. When grown in the open, it has been 

 known to produce seed sparingly at thirty years of age. It 

 cannot be relied on to produce seed oftener than once in 

 three years, and sometimes will not seed more than once in 

 five or six years, and, again, it has been known to bear seed 

 annually for several years; but in such cases the trees 

 stood in the open and were old and showed symptoms of 

 decay. As the White Ash is what botanists call dioecious, 

 that is, the staminate flowers are borne on one tree and the 



