Ash trees are the quiet workers of the land around here. They are not flashy or appreciated by many people. They just quietly grow in every vacant nook and cranny. Ash trees tolerate the worst conditions without a complaint. They are simple-looking trees with a profound silent power. Fast growth, excellent multipurpose wood, wildlife food and habitat, and adaptability are the subtle ways in which ash trees contribute to the world.
When I was first learning to identify trees, my old friend Luke helped me a lot. I remember one time he said, “See how that tree has thick twigs that are opposite? That’s ash.” I thought to myself, That’s easy. A few days later I felt pretty frustrated. I was seeing trees with thick opposite twigs everywhere. There was no way they could all be ash, I thought. Well, they were. Ash is ubiquitous. It grows in virtually all locations and soil types in the Northeast. It is one tough tree that can grow very well in saturated soils, dry ridges, shady groves, competitive fields, sidewalk cracks, and even in the deep woods. Ash trees have very tough, aggressive root systems. I have dug many ash trees out of gardens and am always impressed by the size and strength of the roots.
Ash trees can reach magnificent sizes, even in poor soil. To any wood cutter, they are a gift: simple structures with few branches that are easy to handle. They cut and split like nothing else as their grain is often arrow-straight.
Ashes are one of the fastest-growing trees out in the open sun, but they can tolerate significant shade, too. In the understory, they will grow very slowly, waiting for the canopy to open. Seedlings can persist for decades under very deep shade. Once I was helping a group of kids make longbows. We were thinning out a grove of what looked like very young ash growing extremely close together. One of the kids and I picked a tree that was pretty straight and about the diameter of a baseball bat. After we cut it down, I counted the rings. It was 40 years old! Another time I was with a mentor, Ricardo Sierra of Hawk Circle, who was cutting down some larger ash trees for a project. The trees were about 40 feet tall and as big around as a large man’s thigh. After the trees came down we counted the rings. They were all seven years old. That is the difference between an ash growing in sun and one biding its time in the shade.
I’ve always appreciated ash trees for their firewood, but since I have witnessed the beginning of their possible demise, I see that there is more to them than just that.
Species
There are 45 to 65 species of ash found around the world, growing in such diverse places as Maine, Mexico, Southern Europe, and California.
White Ash (Fraxinus americana)
Native to the eastern half of the United States, this is the tree I know best, since it is so common in all directions from my house. It is found in the valleys, along the roads, up on the ridges, and even on the edge of swamps. It is the biggest and most common ash in the Northeast. White ash is also the most adaptable of the different species around here. It is an excellent pioneer species, able to colonize fields at an astonishing rate.
Green Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica)
Native to the eastern half of the US, green ash is always smaller than mature white ash in my experience. It is less common and grows mostly in very wet fields or swamps. Its wood is not as dense as white ash, but it is still decent enough for lumber and firewood. Green ash was commonly planted as a street tree before the introduction of emerald ash borer. It has the ability to grow well in anaerobic soils and can tolerate the salt and compaction that happens in urban plantings.
Green ash growing in a swamp along the edge of Seneca Lake, New York. This species can tolerate extreme drought as well as prolonged flooding.
Black Ash (Fraxinus nigra)
Native to the northeastern US, black ash grows primarily in swamps. Its bark is quite different from any other ash. It is smooth at the root flare and then furrows a foot or two up the trunk. The bark is corky, like American elm. It feels like Styrofoam when you push on it. Black ash has a long tradition in basketmaking. Logs are cut, soaked, and pounded with a sledgehammer. After a serious amount of pounding, strips of wood begin to separate along growth rings. These strips are woven into some of the strongest baskets in the world. Black ash pack baskets are of an unmatched quality and durability.
Pests and Diseases
It is tough to learn that such an unassuming, tough, quiet tree should appear so doomed. I don’t know if there will be many ash trees around here in the future. I have taken them for granted for so long: one of the most useful and boring trees that is everywhere. Now they may be gone in my lifetime, and in a couple of generations few people will miss them. Of course it is impossible to see the future, but it looks like a tough road ahead for the ash.
The biggest threat facing ash trees is the emerald ash borer (EAB). This bug was brought from Asia by accident in wood pallets or packing material in 2002. It was first discovered in North America in Michigan, where it quickly wiped out 80 million trees. EAB is currently in 31 states and has killed hundreds of millions of trees. Research is being done on introducing a parasitoid wasp that is EAB’s natural predator in China.1
Typical emerald ash borer sign. This tree’s outer bark is being stripped by woodpeckers going after the borers.
Ash trees resistant to EAB have been discovered in Ohio and Michigan. It appears that about 0.5 percent of ash in some populations are unaffected by the borer. These trees are a genetic treasure. Foresters and regular people have been collecting and saving seeds. Surviving ash in areas that have been decimated by EAB are known as lingering ash. They are often isolated from one another and cannot repopulate without human intervention. Aside from pollination, such a large decrease in population can lead to a genetic bottleneck. Now is the time to be identifying lingering ash and growing seeds out.
When chestnut blight swept through the East Coast a century ago, foresters recommended cutting all the trees before the timber was ruined. Today the same is being recommended for ash. We will never know what genetics were destroyed during the collapse of the American chestnut. However, it is not too late to avoid the same mistake with our ash trees. The US Forest Service and MaMA (Monitoring and Managing Ash) are two organizations that are working to collect seeds and identify resistant individuals.2
Though EAB is an enormous threat to ash trees, they have already been dying in large numbers because of ash blight, aka ash yellows. Not a lot is known about this disease. It involves phytoplasma—a specialized type of bacteria that feed on the inner bark of the tree. Ash blight is extremely common in my area. I can spot it by seeing populations of trees with dying tops. Trees often die very slowly and in groups. Along their trunks, they make clusters of very weak sprouts. They are not riddled with woodpecker damage as a tree with EAB would have. The wood is totally sound. For the last 10 years, I have harvested a very large percentage of my firewood from ash infected with blight.
White Ash Wood
White ash grows some of the highest-quality wood in the world. Sometimes it is easy for us to overlook amazing things when they are common. Ash is generally taken for granted, but the wood is totally unique and supports several industries.
One time I was talking to my friend Jeff, who is possibly the most skilled woodworker I have ever met. Jeff manages his own woodlot as well as consulting for other landowners. He was lamenting the loss of ash trees, and said to me, “I just don’t know what they’re going to make rake handles out of after the ash are gone.” I thought to myself, Who cares about rake handles? I later realized, though, that rake handles really illustrate the qualities of ash that make it so unique and valuable. We take rake handles for granted. Many people would not care whether they were made of fiberglass or wood, but those people probably don’t spend as many hours with hand tools as someone like Jeff does. Ash is used for rake handles because it is so light, strong, and stable. Most types of wood will twist and warp as they dry, especially if they are cut into thin dimensions. There are virtually no other woods that could remain stable as a thin handle of a rake.
White ash is not a fancy-looking wood. It does not have the color of cherry or the rays of oak. It is not rot-resistant like locust. And yet it is simply amazing wood, growing as fast and as straight as pine, but still possessing high fuel value, easy workability, and a subtle beauty.
Ash is quality. It is very light and very strong at the same time. I have used it for making longbows with draw weights well over 50 pounds. The bending and springing of wood is a tremendous strain. For wood to be able to bend and snap back like that is no easy task.
Ash is most famous for its use in baseball bats, where it truly excels. Maple or hickory would be just as strong, but they are also much heavier. That combination of strength and lightness is owned by ash alone.
Today ash lumber is finding its way into cabinets, trim, furniture, and flooring. Its subtle, natural beauty is only recently being appreciated, oddly enough at a time when the trees are dying by the millions.
Demonstrating its ability to grow a renewable resource, this ash tree was cut to the stump one year prior to this picture.
White ash is the greatest firewood in the history of firewood. It burns hot, with a BTU value similar to white oak and sugar maple. It is the easiest wood to process. Trees grow straight and with few branches. The rounds split as if by magic with a good whack from a maul. I have split a lot of wood over the years, and there is nothing so satisfying as white ash. Ash not only burns hot and is easy to process, but also seasons faster than other woods. It is considered one of the only woods that you can burn green. (Still, in my experience, wood always burns a lot better when seasoned.)
Wildlife Value
I used to think that ash trees had virtually no value to wildlife, but with a more observant eye, I see that’s not true at all. Ash seedlings endure extreme levels of browse. They are one of the most prolific seedlings in many forests, thickets, and old fields. I have seen them chewed on repeatedly by deer and rabbits year after year. Some trees are 15 years old and no taller than a foot or two. I believe ash serves as a major food source for many deer in my area.
Ash trees grow fast and can become enormous. Just growing all that wood creates habitat for roosting birds, mammals, woodpeckers, and countless tiny critters. Old dead ash trees grown out in the open sun are often covered in vines and bushes and full of holes the size of a raccoon.
Ash do not cast a dense shade. The understory of an ash grove is always a tangle of shrubs, vines, herbs, and other trees.
Ash seeds rain down in cycles. They generally fruit every few years and usually all together. When the ash has a big crop of seeds, they are an important food for numerous songbirds, gamebirds, and mammals large and small. Ash bark makes up 5 to 10 percent of beaver diets in the eastern half of the US.3
Dozens of species of Lepidoptera (butterfly and moth) larvae feed on ash leaves. These Lepidoptera are an important food for birds and are also important in their own right. With the passage of ash trees in the US, countless species of Lepidoptera and other insects will go extinct. Many insects are so specialized that their life is tied to a single species. Some of the insects that feed on ash feed on nothing else. When you lose a tree, you realize there was an entire world connected to it. The tree was not just one being, but an ecosystem of creatures and strange organisms like lichens, phytoplasmas, fungi, tiny bugs, and a host of others that we are not able to perceive.
Commercial Possibilities
Timber and firewood are the traditional ways people have made money from ash trees. Other possibilities include bark baskets, splint baskets, and seed collecting. Biomass production on a small scale, such as a biochar business, seems feasible to me if you have a lot of ash nearby. They coppice so well and they are very enjoyable to work with. It is a lot easier to drag piles of ash branches around than most anything else.
I imagine lumber riddled with the tunnels of emerald ash borers will one day be very valuable, as it will tell the story of this tree.
I hope that I am not saying goodbye to ash trees. It is hard for me to imagine them disappearing. Many times I have been struck by the sight of their winter branches stretching into vibrant evening skies. I hope that if I am an old man and they’ve disappeared from here, I have saved a big jar of seeds and am telling some kids about the time I almost got killed felling a giant ash. Or maybe I’ll tell them about the ash that was undercut by our creek. It was a 100-year-old giant. You could walk under half the root system into a mini cave under the bank. The exposed roots held on to a perfectly smooth stone half the size of a volleyball. They had formed around the stone, creating a round wooden nest. I hope that I tell stories of ash trees and I hope that other people do, too.