Part 10

The Elm tree seed is almost ripe before the leaves (2) begin to sprout. The leaf buds are pink and downy, and the young leaves are folded fan-ways inside. Each leaf has a short stalk, and is small and narrow, with two rows of unequally-sized teeth round the edge. These leaves are rough and harsh above, with many hairs along the centre rib, hairs like those on the Nettle, which is a member of the same family as the Elm, but these hairs, though they irritate, do not actually sting. In October the leaves turn yellow, and after a touch of frost they fall in showers.

Sometimes you will notice large black spots disfiguring the leaves. These spots are caused by a minute plant which makes its home on the leaf and in the end destroys it. After the leaves have fallen, they lie on the ground till spring comes again, then this black plant increases rapidly, and soon covers all the leaf, which quickly decays.

Cattle love the Elm tree leaves when they are green and young, and in some places they are stripped from the trees in sackfuls to feed the cows.

Many insects make their home on the Elm tree. The caterpillar of the large tortoise-shell butterfly feeds on the leaves, and there is an insect beetle that burrows little tunnels in the wood and loosens the bark from the tree. If you pick up some pieces of Elm tree wood where a woodman has been sawing, you will see curious markings like the veins of a skeleton leaf, tunnelled in the wood. These are made by a tiny beetle, and are very injurious to the tree.

But the beetle has an enemy that comes to the tree’s rescue. Sometimes on a still day if you are sitting quietly in the woods, you will hear a gentle tap-tapping close beside you. This is the woodpecker, a bird which is perched on the rough bark of the Elm tree, and with his bill he pecks at the tree in search of insects which form his favourite meal.

Birds love the Elm trees, as their shade is not too dense to shut out the sunshine, and you will often find rooks’ nests in the upper branches, tossed and swayed by the gales.

The Elm tree is useful for many purposes. Farmers plant it in their hedgerows, as grass will grow freely above its roots.

In Italy the Elms are trained to carry the Vines. The young trees have all their lower branches cut off, leaving the bare stem like a living pole; round this pole the slender vine is twined, and its graceful trails hang in festoons from the crown of Elm branches which are left at the top of the pole to give shade. In poetry you read of the Vine tree wedded to the common Elm, which it clasps with its clinging arms.

Elm tree wood is very valuable as timber. These rough bosses which grow on the trunk are prized by cabinet-makers, who find the wood curiously veined and streaked.

The inner lining of the bark is very tough, and is made into ropes and garden string or bast, as in the Lime tree. And the wood is sought for all purposes where durability is needed; it lasts well in water, and is much in demand for ship-building.

The Wych Elm or Broad-leaved Elm resembles the Common Elm in many ways, but there are several small differences you must note. There is no brushwood sheaf clothing the base of the Wych Elm trunk; it is bare and rough right down to the ground. The leaves are larger and much broader, resembling those of the Hazel, and the branches of the Wych Elm are long and spreading and much more graceful than the twisted boughs of its sister Elm.

If you look carefully at the green wings that surround the tiny seed of the Wych Elm and compare it with those of the Common Elm, you will find that the seed lies nearly in the centre of the wing, and that the notch which is cut at the end of the wing is smaller than the deep notch of the Common Elm.

The Wych Elm is far the more graceful of the two trees, and it grows much more quickly than its rugged sister.

The name Wych is supposed to be Scotch. Small pieces of the wood were said to be effective as charms against witches, and country dairy-maids used to place a tiny bit of this Elm wood in the churn so that the witches could not prevent the milk from becoming butter!

THE ASH

1. Ash Tree 2. Leaf Spray 3. “Keys” or “Spinners” Ash Fruit 4. Black Buds 5. Leaf Scars 6. Stamen enlarged 7. Seed enlarged 8. Ash Flowers]

PLATE IX

THE ASH

“If the oak before the ash, Then you’ll only have a splash; If the ash before the oak, Then you’re sure to have a soak.”

--Old Saying.

If the Oak is well named the King of the woods, to the Ash belongs the honour of being called Queen, the wood’s fairest. She is a queen with an ancient history. In the dim long ago there must have been Ash trees, for we read that the great spear of Achilles was an “ashen spear”; also, that the gods held council under the boughs of a great Ash tree: on its highest branches sat an eagle; round its root a serpent lay coiled; and a tiny squirrel ran up and down the branches carrying messages from one to the other.

In much later times the Ash tree was held to have magic powers of healing. Sick babies were said to be cured if they passed through a cleft made in its trunk; and there are many tales of men and animals who recovered from illness on touching an Ash twig gathered from a tree in which a shrew mouse had been buried.

Nowadays we have grown so wise that we think differently about these things, and we love the Ash tree because of its beauty, and are grateful for the many ways in which the wood is useful to us.

You should try to find an Ash tree (1) in early spring. It is one of the easiest trees to recognise before it is clothed in leaves.

The trunk is very straight, and has none of the knobs and bosses which grow on the Oak and Elm tree trunks. When the Ash tree is still young the bark is a pale grey colour--ash-colour, we call it--and it is very smooth. But as the tree grows older the bark cracks into many irregular upright ridges, which remind you of the rimples left by the waves on a sandy sea-shore.

At first the lower branches grow straight out from the trunk, but soon they curve gracefully downwards; then they rise again, and the tips point upward toward the sky.

Notice the tips of these branches--they are quite different from all other tree tips. In an Ash tree you will not see a network of delicate branching twigs outlined against the sky. Each branch ends in a stout pale grey twig, which is slightly flattened at the tip, as if it had been pinched between two fingers when still soft. Beyond this flattened tip you see two fat black buds (4), and there are smaller black buds at the sides of the twig. It is these curious black buds at the tips and on the sides of the twig which will make it easy for you to distinguish the Ash tree from every other.

Long after the other trees have put on their young green leaves the Ash tree stands bare and leafless, waiting till the frost and cold winds are gone before its black buds will unfold. Then out it comes, flowers first. The sooty buds at the sides of the twig open, and you see that they have dark brown linings, and that in the middle of each bud there lies a thick bunch of purple stamen heads (6), crowded together like grains of purple corn; these are the Ash tree flowers (8).