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The Raywood Ash

October

Fraxinus angustifolia var. oxycarpa 'Raywood' is the formal title of this strange ash seedling from South Australia. There are, of course, no Australian ashes, but Raywood was born (so to speak) in an Australian nursery of parents from the Caucasus. The birth took place in 1910 or so in the Mount Lofty Ranges, the hills just east of Adelaide where the Adelaide Botanic Garden has an outstation, and the place in all Australia with the most benign climate for gardening, well supplied with rain from the Great Australian Bight. The promising seedling was grown on in a garden called Raywood nearby, growing extraordinarily quickly, and turning a colour unique among ashes, and unusual among any trees, in autumn. I photographed these trees last year, at Marks Hall in Essex. So far this very tardy autumn they are still green.

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