THE ASH — continued. 
The smooth ashen-grey bark of the bole has been supposed to be the origin of 
the Old English name Ash. The twigs are slightly greener and are noticeably 
flattened below each node, whence spring the prominent bases that support the 
heavy leaves and are afterwards marked by the large leaf-scars. The short, oval, 
wedge-shaped, black buds in the leaf-axils distinguish our species from its American 
congener (F. americana Willdenow) in which they are greenish white. They owe 
their blackness to thickly set flattened hairs filled with a dark resin ; and, as the 
scales bearing these hairs grow, they are separated, so that, as Tennyson implies, 
they are at their blackest “ in the front of March ” and become greener later. 
In April or May, before the leaves unfold, rich vinous clusters of flowers burst 
from the axils. These may be polygamous, simple flask-shaped ovaries appearing 
first, followed by pairs of stamens with purple-black anthers, and by perfect flowers 
possessing both ; but many Ash-trees are either exclusively male or exclusively 
female. It is not till June or July as a rule that the leaves unfold. 
“ The tender Ash delays 
To clothe herself when all the woods are green.” 
Then it is that the play of light through the foliage gives the airy lightness to the 
tree which earned for it William Gilpin’s name of “Venus of the woods.” 
There is a deep groove down the upper surface of the midrib with openings, 
lined with hairs, opposite the leaflets. These have been supposed to be for the 
absorption of rain-water ; but are also said to serve, like the tufts of hair on the 
Linden leaf, as domatia for mites. 
The dense drooping clusters of glossy sap-green “ keys ” or strap-shaped 
samaras take on a blackish hue and then turn to light brown, often hanging on 
until the spring. Evelyn says that they were formerly pickled when green “ as a 
delicate salading.” 
Tougher and more flexible than any other European wood, Ash can be cut for 
walking-sticks when four years old, and for spade-handles at nine : both Greeks and 
Romans used it for spears, as did our modern Lancers ; while its use for the handles 
of ploughs and axes, and for the spokes and felloes of wheels, makes it emphatically 
“ the husbandman’s tree.” It is used also for carriage-poles, oars, and golf-clubs, 
and when of large dimensions is in constant demand for artillery-waggons and other 
ordnance purposes. Though its long roots just beneath the surface, robbing the 
corn of its water-supply, make it unpopular with the farmer when in his hedgerows, 
when cut it is, indeed, as Spenser described it, “ for nothing ill.” 
