Ash wood still frames Morgan sports cars, yet the trees face a double threat
Ash is tough and springy enough for tool handles, Fender guitar bodies and even the frames of Morgan sports cars. That same wood is now under siege: a beetle from Asia threatens some seven billion ash trees in North America, while a fungus has infected about 90 percent of Denmark's.
Fraxinus, the ash genus, belongs to the olive and lilac family and contains 45 to 65 species, mostly deciduous trees across Europe, Asia and North America; China alone has 22 species. Leaves are usually opposite and feather-like, divided into leaflets, and the winged seeds dangle in bunches known as keys. Many species keep male and female flowers on separate trees. The oldest definite fossils come from the Middle Eocene, 49 to 39 million years ago, in southeastern North America.
The English name comes from Old English aesc and the Latin fraxinus from an ancient word for birch; both also meant spear, since ash made good shafts. In Greek myth, ash trees had their own nymphs, the Meliae. Linnaeus described the genus in 1753, and over the following two centuries botanists coined a dozen alternative names for it, all now set aside.
European ash is dense, around 710 kilograms per cubic metre, and burns well. Fender has used ash for electric guitars since 1950, prizing its balanced tone, and drum makers value its resonance. Green ash lines American streets, blue ash bark once yielded blue dye, Sicilians cut manna ash bark to collect a sugary sap, and in Britain young keys are traditionally pickled with vinegar and spices. Ash also feeds the larvae of many insects, along with birds and mammals.
The emerald ash borer arrived in North America from eastern Asia in solid wood packing between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Its larvae chew through the inner bark, cutting off water and nutrients, and tens of millions of ash trees have died from it across 22 US states plus Ontario and Quebec. People are urged not to move firewood, and Asian wasps that prey on it are being tested as controls. In Europe, ash dieback caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus has spread since the mid-1990s, reaching mature British woodland by 2012, though trees in mixed landscapes seem somewhat resistant.
Source: Fraxinus
