_Of the Ash._
1. _Fraxinus_ the ash, is with us reputed male and female, the one
affecting the higher grounds; the other the plains, of a whiter wood,
and rising many times to a prodigious stature; so as in forty years from
the key, an ash hath been sold for thirty pounds sterling: And I have
been credibly inform’d, that one person hath planted so much of this one
sort of timber in his life time, as hath been valued worth fifty
thousand pounds to be bought. These are pretty encouragements, for a
small and pleasant industry. That there is a lower, and more knotty
sort, every husbandman can distinguish.
2. The keys or toungs being gathered from a young thriving tree when
they begin to fall (which is about the end of October, and the ensuing
month) are to be laid to dry, and then sowed any time betwixt that and
Christmas; but not altogether so deep as your somer masts: Thus they do
in Spain, from whence it were good to procure some of the keys from
their best trees: A very narrow seminary will be sufficient to store a
whole country: They will lie a full year in the ground before they
appear; therefore you must carefully fence them all that time, and have
patience: But if you would make a considerable wood of them at once,
dig, or plow a parcel of ground, as you would prepare it for corn, and
with the corn, especially oats, (or what other grain you think fittest)
sow also good store of keys, some crab-kernels, &c. amongst them: Take
off your crop of corn, or seed in its season, and the next year
following, it will be cover’d with young ashes, which will be fit either
to stand (which I prefer) or be transplanted for divers years after; and
these you will find to be far better than any you can gather out of the
woods (especially suckers, which are worth nothing) being removed at one
foot stature (the sooner the better); for an ash of two years thus taken
out of the nursery, shall outstrip one of ten, taken out of the hedge;
provided you defend them well from cattel, which are exceedingly
licorish after their tops: The reason of this hasty transplanting, is to
prevent their obstinate and deep rooting; _tantus amor terræ_
............. which makes them hard to be taken up when they grow older,
and that being removed, they take no great hold till the second year,
after which, they come away amain; yet I have planted them of five and
six inches diameter, which have thriven as well as the smaller wands.
You may accelerate their springing by laying the keys in sand, and some
moist fine earth s. s. s. but lay them not too thick, or double, and in
a cover’d, though airy place for a winter, before you sow them; and the
second year they will come away mainly; so you weed, trim and cleanse
them. Cut not his head at all (which being young, is pithy) nor, by any
means the fibrous part of the roots; only that down-right, or taproot
(which gives our husbandmen so much trouble in drawing) is to be totally
abated: But this work ought to be in the increase of October, or
November, and not in the Spring. We are (as I told you) willing to spare
his head rather than the side branches (which whilst young, may be cut
close) because being yet young, it is but of a spungy substance; but
being once well fixed, you may cut him as close to the earth as you
please; it will cause him to shoot prodigiously, so as in a few years to
be fit for pike-staves; whereas if you take him wild out of the forest,
you must of necessity strike off the head, which much impairs it.
Hedgerow ashes may the oftner be decapitated, and shew their heads again
sooner than other trees so us’d. Young ashes are sometimes in winter
frost-burnt, black as coals, and then to use the knife is seasonable,
though they do commonly recover of themselves slowly. In South-Spain,
(where, as we said, are the best) after the first dressing, they let
them grow till they are so big, as being cleft into four parts, each
part is sufficient to make a pike-staff: I am told there is a Flemish
ash planted by the Dutchmen in Lincolnshire, which in six years grows to
be worth twenty shillings the tree; but I am not assur’d whether it be
the ash or abeele; either of them were, upon this account, a worthy
encouragement, if at least the latter can be thought to bear that price,
which I much question: From these low cuttings come our ground-ashes, so
much sought after for arbours, espaliers, and other pole-works: They
will spring in abundance, and may be reduced to one for a standard-tree,
or for timber, if you design it; for thus hydra-like, a ground-cut-ash,
By havock, wounds and blows,
More lively and luxuriant grows.{89:1}
Ash will be propagated from a bough slipt off with some of the old wood,
a little before the bud swells, but with difficulty by layers. Such as
they reserve for spears in Spain, they keep shrip’d up close to the
stem, and plant them in close order, and moister places. These they cut
above the knot (for the least nodosity spoils all) in the decrease of
January, which were of the latest for us: It is reported that the ash
will not only receive its own kind, but graff, or be inoculated with the
pear and apple, but to what improvement I know not.
3. It is by no means convenient to plant ash in plow-lands; for the
roots will be obnoxious to the coulter; and the shade of the tree is
malignant both to corn and grass, when the head and branches over-drip
and emaciate ’em; but in hedge-rows and plumps, they will thrive
exceedingly, where they may be dispos’d at nine or ten foot distance,
and sometimes nearer: But in planting of a whole wood of several kinds
of trees for timber, every third set at least, would be an ash. The best
ash delights in the best land (which it will soon impoverish) yet grows
in any; so it be not over-stiff, wet, and approaching to the marshy,
unless it be first well drain’d: By the banks of sweet, and crystal
rivers and streams, I have observ’d them to thrive infinitely. One may
observe as manifest a difference in the timber of ashes, as of the oak;
much more than is found in any one kind of elm, _cœteris paribus_: For
so the ground-ash (like the oak) much excels a bough, or branch of the
same bulk, for strength and toughness; and in yet farther emulation of
the oak, it has been known to prove as good and lasting timber for
building, nay, preferr’d before it, where there has been plenty of oak;
vast difference there is also in the strength of ground, and quarter’d
ash: ’Tis likewise remarkable that the ash, like the cork-tree, grows
when the bark is as it were quite peel’d off, as has been observ’d in
several forests, where the deer have bared them as far as they could
climb: Some ash is curiously camleted and vein’d, I say, so differently
from other timber, that our skilful cabinet-makers prize it equal with
ebony, and give it the name of green ebony, which the customer pays well
for; and when our wood-men light upon it, they may make what money they
will of it: But to bring it to that curious lustre, so as ’tis hardly
to be distinguished from the most curiously diaper’d olive, they varnish
their work with the china-varnish, (hereafter described) which
infinitely excels linseed-oyl, that Cardan so commends, speaking of this
root. The truth is, the _bruscum_ and _molluscum_ to be frequently found
in this wood, is nothing inferior to that of maple, (of which hereafter)
being altogether as exquisitely diaper’d, and wav’d like the gamahes of
Achates; an eminent example of divers strange figures of fish, men and
beasts, Dr. Plott speaks of to be found in a dining-table made of an old
ash, standing in a gentleman’s house somewhere in Oxfordshire: Upon
which is mention’d that of Jacobus Gaffarellus, in his book of
_Unheard-of Curiosities_; namely of a tree found in Holland, which being
cleft, had in the several slivers, the figures of a chalice, a priest’s
albe, his stole, and several other pontifical vestments: Of this sort
was the elm growing at Middle-Aston in Oxfordshire, a block of which
wood being cleft, there came out a piece so exactly resembling a
shoulder of veal, that it was worthy to be reckon’d among the
curiosities of this nature.
4. The use of ash is (next to that of the oak it self) one of the most
universal: It serves the soldier ............ & _Fraxinus utilis
hastis_, and heretofore the scholar, who made use of the inner bark to
write on, before the invention of paper, &c. The carpenter,
wheel-wright, cart-wright, for ploughs, axle-trees, wheel-rings,
harrows, bulls, oares, the best blocks for pullies and sheffs, as seamen
name them; for drying herrings, no wood like it, and the bark for the
tanning of nets; and, like the elm, for the same property (of not being
so apt to split and scale) excellent for tenons and mortaises: Also for
the cooper, turner, and thatcher: Nothing like it for our garden
palisade-hedges, hop-yards, poles, and spars, handles, stocks for tools,
spade-trees, &c. In sum, the husbandman cannot be without the ash for
his carts, ladders, and other tackling, from the pike to the plow,
spear, and bow; for of ash were they formerly made, and therefore
reckon’d amongst those woods, which after long tension, has a natural
spring, and recovers its position; so as in peace and war it is a wood
in highest request: In short, so useful and profitable is this tree,
(next to the oak) that every prudent lord of a mannor, should employ one
acre of ground, with ash or acorns, to every 20 acres of other land;
since in as many years, it would be more worth than the land it self.
There is extracted an oyl from the ash, by the process on other woods,
which is excellent to recover the hearing, some drops of it being
distill’d warm into the ears; and for the _caries_ or rot of the bones,
tooth-ach, pains in the kidneys, and spleen, the anointing therewith is
most soveraign. Some have us’d the saw-dust of this wood instead of
_guiacum_, with success. The chymists exceedingly commend the seed of
ash to be an admirable remedy for the stone: But (whether by the power
of magick or nature, I determine not) I have heard it affirm’d with
great confidence, and upon experience, that the rupture to which many
children are obnoxious, is healed, by passing the infant thro’ a wide
cleft made in the hole or stem of a growing ash-tree, thro’ which the
child is to be made pass; and then carried a second time round the ash,
caused to repass the same aperture again, that the cleft of the tree
suffer’d to close and coalesce, as it will, the rupture of the child,
being carefully bound up, will not only abate, but be perfectly cur’d.
The _manna_ of Calabria is found to exsude out of the leaves and boughs
of this tree, during the hot summer-months. Lastly, the white and rotten
dotard part composes a ground for our gallants sweet-powder, and the
trunchions make the third sort of the most durable coal, and is (of all
other) the sweetest of our forest-fuelling, and the fittest for ladies
chambers, it will burn even whilst it is green, and may be reckoned
amongst the ἄκαπνα ξύλα. To conclude, the very dead leaves afford
(like those of the elm) relief to our cattle in winter; and there is a
dwarf-sort in France, (if in truth it be not, as I suspect, our
witchen-tree) whose berries feed the poor people in scarce years; but it
bears no keys, like to ours, which being pickled tender, afford a
delicate salading. But the shade of the ash is not to be endur’d,
because the leaves produce a noxious insect; and for displaying
themselves so very late, and falling very early, not to be planted for
umbrage or ornament; especially near the garden, since (besides their
predatious roots) the leaves dropping with so long a stalk, are drawn by
clusters into the worm-holes, which foul the allies with their keys, and
suddenly infect the ground. Note, that the season for felling of this
tree must be when the sap is fully at rest; for if you cut it down too
early, or over-late in the year, it will be so obnoxious to the worm, as
greatly to prejudice the timber; therefore to be sure, fell not till the
three mid-winter months, beginning about November: But in lopping of
pollards, (as of soft woods) Mr. Cook advises it should be towards the
Spring, and that you do not suffer the lops to grow too great: Also,
that so soon as a pollard comes to be considerably hollow at the head,
you suddenly cut it down, the body decaying more than the head is worth:
The same he pronounces of taller ashes, and where the wood-peckers make
holes (who constantly indicate their being faulty) to fell it in the
Winter. I am astonish’d at the universal confidence of some, that a
serpent will rather creep into the fire, than over a twig of ash; this
is an old imposture of{94:1} Pliny’s, who either took it up upon trust,
or we mistake the tree. Other species, see _Ray Dendrolog._ t. III. lib.
XXX. p. 95. _De fraxino_, t. II. p. 1704.
FOOTNOTES:
{89:1}
Per damna, per cædes, ab ipso
Ducit opes animúmque ferro.
_Hor._
{94:1} V. _Churasium_, &c. _de viperis_.