144 



THE ASH. 



very conspicuous, and add materially to the ordi- 

 nary graceful character of the tree. They grow 

 in dense clusters on the extremities of those 

 branches which were produced in the former year : 

 and, buried among them, lie the rudiments of 

 the future leading shoot. They are difficult to ' 

 describe except in the technical language of the 

 botanist, but will amply reward any one who will 

 take the pains to examine them closely : for, mi- 

 nute as they are, they are very elegant, and. the 

 rich purple contrasts beautifully with the delicate 

 greenish-yellow tint of the flower stalks, though 

 when the tree is observed from a distance, the 

 latter are so closely concealed by the flowers as 

 to be scarcely apparent. In its earher stage of 

 growth, the mass of unexpanded flowers is not 

 unlike an irregularly granulated fruit ; it even- 

 tually becomes diffuse, and is finally succeeded by 

 bunches of pendent seeds, not in- 



tl appropriately called keys,^ They 

 differ from the keys of the Syca- 

 nH more in gro\^ing singly, instead of 

 ■n in pairs, but like them are winged, 

 and remain firmly attached to the 

 1 J™ tree, until the season when winds 

 lii l prevail sufficiently powerful to strip 

 them from the branches and carry 

 them a considerable distance from 

 the parent tree. How wise a provision this 

 is, is very conspicuous in the case of the Ash, 

 for, as v\'e have seen above, the roots of this 

 tree naturally extend horizontally so near the 

 surface as to exhaust the soil and, consequently, 

 to render it unfit for the nourishment of seedlings 



* The Latins termed the seed of the Ash lingua avis {bird's tongue) 

 from some fancied resemblance in shape. 



