THE ASHES 187 



Ash blossoms sleep between brown wool 

 blankets in the cosiest of purplish-black buds. 

 They open before the leaf -buds do and seem loth 

 to vanish. None but a botanist, however, would 

 call them blossoms. They are without petals, 

 perfume, and nectar — the merest apologies for 

 bloom. Usually the staminate and pistillate 

 flowers are borne in branching plume-like 

 bunches on separate trees, but sometimes the 

 white ash, reverting, no doubt, to ancient family 

 types, produces a pistil in a little group of sta- 

 mens, or hangs out a misplaced anther on its 

 slender little filament amidst a sisterhood of 

 pistils. Pollen from the purplish anthers flies 

 from tree to tree and in time nearly every green 

 branching pistil ripens into a winged box or 

 fruit. The wings of the ash fruit are not like 

 the gauzy, katydid wings of the elms and ma- 

 ples ; they are papery and opaque, but they scud 

 rapidly before the wind and are often carried 

 considerable distances. 



The ash ranges farther north than the oak. 

 It is the chief timber tree of northern Europe. 

 The old vikings of Norway and Denmark were 

 frequently termed "ash men," no doubt because 

 their ships and the handles of their weapons 

 were of ash. Then, too, the tree itself in life 

 and character was not unlike those sturdy he- 



