I love the description from the Collins Tree guide I have, its technical, but also rich and poetic in places. Very fitting.
Europe (including Britain and Ireland); the Caucaus. Abundant/dominant except on light sands; planted everywhere. the flexible 'ash blonde' timber (used for tool-handles) burns even when green.
Appearance Shape Very often; slender, cleanly curving limbs on a often long bore hole. The silvery shoots may droop then curl up like branches of a chandelier. Festooned frequently in ivy, which the airy crown fails to supress, and affected by 'ash die back' (probably due to environmental stresses): once known to 45m; now rarely to 30m. Bark Pale grey, developing a usually regular network of shallow, criss cross ridges; rarely more like English oak's. Erupting black bacterial cankers disfigure many trees. Shoots Grey. Buds Mitre-shaped, soon sooty-black - other ashes have brown buds. Leaves In opposite pair; 9-13 irregularly serrated leaflets (the side ones stalkless), dull above and white-downy under the lower midrib, on a slightly downy main stalk. The last wild tree into leaf, and one of the first to go bare, fleetingly pale yellow. Flowers Nominally dioecious. Some trees change sex yearly, some carry branches of the wrong sex, some are hermaphrodite, and some produce dual-sex ('perfect') flowers. Fruit Bunched keys ripen biscuit brown.
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