ASH TREE (Part 1) (Fraxinus excelsior ) Crann Fuinnseog

Another of our native trees, the Ash supports 41 invertebrate species. We invite reader’s to take note of some branches where ‘keys’(seeds) are set in late Autumn and monitor same for flowers next Spring. Ash’s scientific name translates both the ash tree and javelin ( excelsior ); giving us ‘very lofty’ or ‘sublime’.

The tree of life to the Celt. To the Roman and earlier Greek classical world – ‘Venus of the Woods’.

Our ancient Irish Ogham alphabet, rather than A,B,C commenced B,L,N pronounced Beith, Luis, Nin (also Nuin) and giving us the Birch, Rowanberry and Ash. The T.C.D 9th century Brehon Law manuscript records ash as ‘Uinnius’ and names it among the seven Chieftain Trees – our most commanding of timber trees. It yielded oars, fodder, furniture (when ruling, kings must be seated on a throne of ash), charcoal, hurley sticks, spear shafts, yellow dye and in our day snooker cues.

In our central alkaline rich midlands, ash attains up to 40 metres. Our single most nutrient demanding tree of the forest requires four times more macro-nutrients than our oak. Field guides suggest average ash longevity circa 200 years – author recorded 370 annual rings of an ash blown down during the 1997 Christmas week hurricane in the vicinity of Macroom.

Our most iconic ash grew at Uisneach (centre of Ireland) – “And it was surely known to you That here the Ash of Uisneach grew, The lordliest tree of forest kind That flung it’s boughs to wave on wind, Counted by chroniclers of kings Among our Isle’s most precious things. It sprang a seedling on the morn That Con of the Hundred Fights was born ! And whilst kings reigned from Con descended, This ash tree grew to stature splendid...” Ash Tree of Uisneach, penned c 1898

In a 10 year research programme co-funded by the GAA and published in 1996, we learn of an extremely rare ‘ecological development’ in ash – heretofore understood to be present in separate gender plants – ash branches now bear both male and female flowers; dense purplish clusters that emerge before the foliage. More bafflingly, the same branch can bear male one year and female the following. Science explains it as sexual confusion – living on our little known planet, it would be less unedifying to interpret or describe ash’s decisions as ‘evolutionary adaptation’.

Like our rowan tree, ash leaves are pinnate – seven pairs of deeply toothed leaflets on a central stem. It’s fertilised seeds require two winters to germinate. Our abundance of ash seedlings this spring suggests a ‘mast year’ in 2018. As EU pressure mounts to clean up our contaminated sites, ash (only after willow) can endure low O 2 conditions, eg planting on capped landfill sites.

Our elders reckoned ‘Ash before Oak a summer soak; Oak before Ash a summer splash’. Though carbon concentrations will alter the rate and energy of tree growth, our ash remains the last of our native trees to flush and, traditionally, our first to shed it’s pale green canopy. Ted Cook