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Fraxinus excelsior

I once proposed planting an avenue of ash trees on the approach to a French chateau. Monsieur le vicomte looked shocked: 'Mais ce n'est pas un arbre noble'. Not a noble tree? The French have ways of categorizing everything, but it was news to me that a tree is either noble or, presumably, ignoble. Not noble? Look at the photograph on the right, of a typical farmland ash in a Welsh valley.

Not only noble, but beautiful and extremely useful. True it comes into leaf late (either later or earlier than the oak); it often drops its leaves with no autumn change; it seeds prolifically. But it grows fast, it forms a fresh-looking canopy, glinting light green in spring, and creates dense, even-grained, light-coloured timber - the best firewood of all. It loves damp ground but grows well on shallow rocky soil. Cattle love its leaves. It is immensely long-lived.

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