FRAXINUS EXCELSIOR— THE ASH. 
Class XXIII. POLY GAM I A. Order I. DKECIA. 
Natural Order, OLEACEJS. THE OLIVE TRIBE. 
Fraxinus Excelsior. Leaflets almost sessile, lanceolate-oblong, acuminate, serrated, cuneated at the 
base; flowers naked; samara obliquely emarginate at the apex. Native of Europe. The leaves have 
generally 5 pairs of leaflets, from 4 to 6. The flowers are produced in loose spikes from the sides of the 
branches. There are not only female flowers, the hermaphrodite ones, but also male ones. 
The Ash, in German and Dutch, is called Esche or Asche ; in Danish and Swedish, Ask; in French, 
Le Fr4ne ; in Italian, Frassino ; in Spanish, Fresno ; in Portuguese, Freixo; in Russian, Jas, Jasen, or Jassen. 
T^.e English name is from the Saxon AEsa. Ray says it has its name from the colour of the bark. Its 
usual time of flowering is March and April ; of leafing, from April 22nd to May 15th. The timber of the 
ash is next in value to the oak, and in some places equal to it: it is hard and tough, and of excellent use to 
the coachmaker, wheelwright, and Cartwright, for ploughs, axle-trees, fellies, harrows, and many other im- 
plements of husbandry ; for ladders, oars, blocks for pulleys, &c. Anciently it was in great request for 
spears. Being not apt to split and scale, it is excellent for tenons and mortises ; also for the cooper, turner, 
and thatcher. Nothing is like it for palisade-hedges, hop-yards, poles and spars, handles and stocks for 
tools, &c. When curiously veined, the cabinet-makers use it, and call it green Ebony. Of all timber it is 
the sweetest fuel. If a wood of ash-trees be managed well, it will turn greatly to the advantage of its 
owner ; the underwood will be fit to cut every seven or eight years for hoops, or every 14 years for hop- 
poles, &c. and still there will be a stock preserved for timber. The best season for felling the ash is from 
November to February ; but for lopping pollards, the spring is preferable for all soft woods. The ashes of 
the wood afford a very good potash. The bark is used for tanning cat-skin and nets. In the north of Lan- 
cashire they lop the ash, to feed the cattle, in autumn, when the grass is upon the decline. The leaves have 
been gathered to mix with tea. An infusion of them is an aperient; and a decoction of 2 drachms of the 
bark, or 6 of the leaves, has been used in the cure of agues. If cows eat the leaves or shoots, the butter 
from their milk is said to be rank ; but this is doubtful, for there is no taste in ash-leaves to countenance 
the assertion, and this is the next tree, after the elm, which the Romans recommended for fodder. The 
ash is, however, a very improper tree for hedge row’s, and the borders of arable land ; the drip of it is very 
unfavourable to all other vegetable productions ; it exhausts the soil much, and the roots spread widely 
near the surface, so that it injures the hedge, and impoverishes the crop sown near it. 
Though the ash be a handsome tree, it should not bv any means be planted for protection or orna- 
ment, because the leaves come out late, and fall early. The fertile trees also generally exhaust themselves 
so much in bearing keys or fruit, that their foliage is scanty, and their appearance unsightly. The trees, 
however, which bear male flowers only, have a full and verdant foliage, and make a handsome figure, though 
late in the season. It is well calculated for standards and clumps, in large parks and plantations, and for 
groves and woods. It will grow in very barren soils, and in the bleakest and most exposed situations. It 
is so hardy as to endure the sea winds, and may therefore be planted on the coast, where few trees wdll 
prosper. If planted by ditch sides, or in low, boggy meadow s, the roots act as under-drains, and render 
the ground about them firm and hard; the timber, however, is in this case of little value. It was natural 
that our remote ancestors, when the island w T as overrun with wood, should value trees rather for their fruit 
than their timber ; it is no wonder, then, that by the laws of Howel Dda, the price of an oak or a beech 
should be 120 pence, while the ash, because it furnished no food for swine, was valued only at fourpence. 
The Edda or Woden, however, holds the ash in the highest veneration ; and man is described as being 
formed from it. Hesiod, in like manner, deduces his brazen race of men from the ash ; and in his Theo- 
gony has nymphs of the name of MeXtaj. It is probably owing to the remains of Gothic veneration for this 
tree, that the country people, in the south-east part of the kingdom, split young ashes, and pass their dis- 
tempered children through the chasm, in hopes of a cure. They have also a superstitious custom of boring 
a hole in an ash, and fastening in a shrew mouse; a few strokes with a branch of this tree are then accounted 
a sovereign remedy against cramps and lameness in cattle, which are ignorantly supposed to proceed from 
