WHITE ASH 



slightly droopinor poise of its leaves, and the soft, rich, mellow 

 green of its foliage unite to attract our admiration. Its spray 

 is clumsy compared with that of the beech and the maple. 

 Although the leaves are tufted at the end of the spray, the 

 branches are not bare ; on the contrary such is the flowing, 

 clinging effect of its foliage that the tree may be said in a 

 peculiar degree to be clothed with its leaves. The trunk rises 

 more than an average height before it divides and after the 

 division still retains a central shaft, yet this shaft disappears 

 from sight as soon as it enters the mass of foliage, and can- 

 not be traced through the leafy head. 



The autumnal tints are most unusual and most beautiful. 

 Wilson Flagg in '' A Year Among the Trees " writes concern- 

 ing them : " The colors of the ash are quite unique, and dis- 

 tinguish it from all other trees. Under favorable circum- 

 stances its coloring process is nearly uniform. It begins with 

 a general impurpling of the whole mass of foliage nearly at 

 the same time and the gradual changes remind me of those 

 observed in sea mosses during the process of bleaching. 

 There is an invariable succession in these tints as in the 

 brightening beams of morn. They are first of a dark bronze, 

 turning from this to a chocolate, then to a violet brown, and 

 finally to a salmon color or yellow with a shade of lilac. 

 When the leaves are faded nearly yellow, they are ready to 

 drop from the tree. It is remarkable that with all this vari- 

 ety of hues neither crimson nor any shade of scarlet is ever 

 seen in the ash. It ought to be remembered that the grada- 

 tions of autumn tints in all cases are in the order of those of 

 sunrise, from dark to lighter hues, and never the reverse. I 

 make no reference to the browns of dead leaves which are 

 darker than yellow or orange, from which they turn. I speak 

 only of the changes of leaves before they are seared or dry." 



Tw^o traditions follow the ash tree. They have come to 

 us from Europe and their origin seems lost in the mists of 

 antiquity. One is that no serpent w^illingly glides beneath 

 its branches or rests under its shade. This belief was old in 

 Pliny's time, for he states as a fact that if a serpent be placed 



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