So commanding, yet at the same time so light and graceful, does a well-grown Ash appear, that Gilpin called it the "Venus of the Woods." This may appear to some to be rather too close an approach to the "Lady of the Woods" (Birch), but in our opinion it well expresses the characteristics of the two. They are both exceedingly graceful, but the beauty of the Birch is that of the nymph, whilst that of the Ash is the combined grace and strength of the goddess. I have said "a well-grown" Ash, a phrase by which the timberman would understand a tree that had been hemmed in so closely by other trees that it has had no chance of developing as a tree, but only as a straight stout stick of wood, from eighty to one hundred feet long. My well-grown Ash is in a meadow,
where both soil and atmosphere are moist and cool; where it has had elbow-room to reach its long graceful arms upwards and outwards, and to cover them with the plumy circlets of long leaves. It is there, or on the outskirts of the wood, or in the hedgerow, that the Ash is able to do credit to Gilpin's name for it.
Before the reign of iron and steel was quite so universal, Ash timber was in demand for many uses where the metals have now supplanted it. It was then far more widely grown as a hedgerow tree than is now the case. Selby laments the neglect of this former custom, which kept up a supply of
tough and elastic timber, useful in all agricultural operations, and added much to the beauty of the country. No doubt the noxious drip and shade of the Ash have had much to do with this abandonment of it, for few things can live beneath it—a condition helped by its numerous fibrous roots, which quickly exhaust and drain the soil, and so starve out other plants. Although it thus drains the surface soil, it is not dependent upon these upper layers for food, for its much-branched roots extend very deeply in the porous soils it prefers.
It must not be supposed from the foregoing remarks that the Ash is confined to the lowlands. In Yorkshire it is found growing at an elevation of 1350 feet; in Mid-Germany it grows as far up as 3500 feet, and in the Alpine districts 500 feet higher still. It has a preference for the northern and eastern sides of hills, where the atmosphere is moist and cool, and the soil deep and porous, for it loves free and not stagnant moisture for its roots.
The bark of both trunk and branches is pale grey, and some look to this as the origin of the tree's English name. On examining the leafless branches in early spring, two things strike the observer—the blackness of the big opposite leaf-buds, and the stoutness of the twigs. This latter fact is due to the great size of the leaves they have to support, which implies a considerable strain in wind or rain. What are generally regarded as the leaves of the Ash are only leaflets, though they are equal in size to the leaves of most of our trees. The largest of the leaflets are about three inches in length, and there are from four to seven—mostly six—pairs, and an odd terminal one, to each leaf. They are lance-shaped, with toothed edges. The leaves are late in appearing, but, like Charles Lamb and his office-hours, they make up for it by an early departure.
The flowers of the Ash are very poor affairs, for they have