Raywood ash, Claret ash
OLEACEAE, The Olive family

It was misting as I biked to work this morning. It felt like the first rain in months. It very nearly was.

Riding slowly home I eyed trees laden with plums and apples. Time to go scrumping. Autumn is coming.

Another beauty on the landscape is a narrow-leaved ash tree with pale, marked bark. It grows 25 to 35 feet tall, by 25 feet wide. The name claret ash refers to its purple-red fall color. Native to the Mediterranean region, it needs full sun and only moderate water. It has no seeds, which anyone whose ever tried to garden near a seeded ash will recognize as a kind of blessing. In one particularly memorable year of gardening on Albert we estimated there were a hundred thousand green ash Fraxinus pennsyvanica seedlings from the neighbor’s tree in our yard.

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