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West Virginia Trees

Chapter 128: BLACK ASH
By A. B. Brooks
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Nature/Gardening/Animals

About This Book

A practical field guide to the native and introduced trees of West Virginia, providing keys based mainly on leaves and fruits, concise family and species descriptions, and detailed line drawings for about 101 native species. It organizes trees by botanical families, gives brief flower notes, a glossary of terms, and suggestions for identifying specimens; occasional introduced species and shrubs are noted. The bulletin emphasizes simplicity for non-specialists, offers measurements and habit descriptions for each species, and includes administrative prefatory material. Its aim is to aid lay readers and students in tree identification and to encourage local interest in forestry.

BLACK ASH

Fraxinus nigra, Marsh.

Form.—Height 60-90 feet, diameter 1-2 feet; trunk rather slender, and straight, bearing a narrow-ovoid or rounded crown of upright branches.

Leaves.—Opposite, pinnately compound, 12-16 inches long; leaflets 7-11, 3-5 inches long, sessile, except the terminal one, oblong to oblong-lanceolate, taper-pointed, serrate, glabrous.

Flowers.—May; polygamo-dioecious; borne in loose drooping panicles.

Fruit.—Matures in early autumn; samaras 1-1½ inches long, in open drooping clusters.

Bark.—Soft, ash-gray, and scaly on old trunks, not deeply fissured. The outside corky bark is easily rubbed off with the hand.

Wood.—Heavy, coarse-grained, weak, rather soft, brown with thin lighter sapwood.

Range.—Newfoundland and Manitoba south to Virginia and Arkansas.

Distribution in West Virginia.—Not common. Found in Fayette, Preston and Tucker counties. Reported from Randolph, Webster, Monongalia, Summers, and Wirt counties.

Habitat.—Low river bottoms and swamps.

Notes.—This tree is only occasionally found in West Virginia and cannot be considered as an important species. When in leaf it is easily distinguished from the other Ashes by the leaflets which are sessile on the main petiole.