Fraxinus shows her frilly underthings.
The sun picked out a bunchy mass of shiny green leaves for me to examine today, and, pretty as it was, what caught my attention were the clusters of pistachio-colored fandangles peeking out from underneath the branches.
Fraxinus americana, the most common white ash tree, produces these panicles of happy-go-lucky fruits, which will mature into 2” long seed pods called winged samara resembling tiny canoe paddles. In the fall they will mature, become papery thin, and the winter winds will broadcast them widely.
"There are no angles on a young ash tree — everything is rounded and covered in fluttering foliage, soft as the feathers in a boa or the fur of a chinchilla.”
Fiona Stafford
As lovely and graceful as an ash tree is, it’s also a valuable timber tree. Its wood is commercially used for a variety of products - tool handles, oars, garden furniture and sports equipment and, most famously, white ash is the wood of the Louisville Slugger baseball bats.
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