UTILIZATION OF ASH. “15 
containing ash by clearing for agriculture, or, on the other, the | 
possible influence of forest management in increasing the per acre 
growth of ash, factors which might be considered, to some extent 
at least, as counterbalancing each other. 
CHARACTERISTICS OF ASH WOOD. 
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE WOOD. 
Ash wood is heavy, strong, tough, stiff, and hard and takes a high 
polish. It shrinks only moderately in seasoning and bends well 
when seasoned. The layers of annual growth are clearly marked by 
several rows of large, open ducts occupying (in slow-grewing speci-. 
mens) nearly the entire width of the annual ring. The medullary. 
rays are numerous and obscure. The color of the heartwood is 
brown; the sapwood is much lighter, often nearly white. 
The proportion of heartwood and sapwood varies chiefly with 
the age of the tree. Old-growth ash trees, over 150 years in age, 
have a narrow rim of sap, usually less than 2 inches wide, and in 
black ash often less than Linch. (See Pl. VIII.) In second-growth 
ash less than 100 years in age the width of the sap, on trees over 
12 inches in diameter, is usually from 8 to 6 inches, and forms by 
far the greater part of the lumber cut. Black-ash lumber, which 
usually is cut from very old, slow-growing trees, is mostly dark- 
colored heartwood, and the lumber for this reason is known com- 
mercially as brown ash. Over half of the white-ash and nearly all 
of the green-ash lumber is cut from trees less than 100 or 150 years 
in age and is mostly of the lighter color characteristic of sapwood. 
Lumber from rapid-growing second-growth white and green ash 
is rather coarse grained and not especially attractive in figure. Lum- 
ber from slow-growing old growth, especially black ash, is finer 
grained and handsome in figure. Curly-ash lumber is occasionally 
cut, usually from black ash, and has an especially handsome figure. 
The fuel value of dry-ash wood is, on the average, 81 per cent as 
high as hickory and 91 per cent as high as oak. Heavy sticks of 
ash frequently will equal oak in fuel value, especially biue, white, 
and green ash. In general, a cord of ash wood will give approxi- 
mately the same heating value as 1 ton of high-grade coal. 
STRUCTURE. 
Ash is a conspicuously ring-porous wood with numerous pores 
plainly visible to the naked eye in cross section. The structure, as 
it appears in transverse, radial, and tangential sections, is shown by 
Plate IV, figures 1, 2, and 3.2. The annual ring is made conspicuous 
1from figures compiled by H. S. Betts and Ernest Bateman, of the Forest Service. 
2 Photomicrographs of slides made by A. Koehler, of the Forest Products Laboratory. 
