fraxinus americana L.
From baseball bats to lacrosse sticks, from splint baskets to tool handles, wood from the ash tree has been a staple of woodworkers across the country. Sadly, it’s under attack from the Emerald Ash Borer and millions of trees have already been lost.
Characteristic half-moon exit holes:
Sapwood damage:
Here are a couple of links which speak further of the Emerald Ash Borer, its range, and controls:
http://www.emeraldashborer.info/identifyeab.cfm and http://www.emeraldashborer.info/
Locally, the borer’s damage hasn’t been acutely felt yet. Irina and Alexey from Salicicola have shot some great images of white ash, including the fine specimen below from Lenox, MA:
This truly has become an urgent matter–we may be witnessing the demise of a species–which makes using ash an almost philosophical quandary. Peter Follansbee, joiner here at The Plant, touched on this very subject in his recent post about ash, If it aint oak… Please have a look at Peter’s blog if you haven’t already. It’s an inspiration. The respectful use of this beautiful tree, being made into long-lasting chairs and baskets, is one way to honor it.
A local baseball bat-making business, The Barnstable Bat Company, has begun making bats out of yellow birch–who knew? Yellow birch compresses and hardens in the “sweet spot” of the bat through use. Everyone is affected by the borer and those who have traditionally used ash are adapting. Perhaps the “crack of the bat” will mean a very different thing to the next generation.
The other morning, I came across Mark at our saw-pit. He’d just come out of the woods where he’d been planting native white oak acorns in various locations around our campus. We control what we can, and think about those who will follow us.
The coffee can held the acorns. The pointy-stick was used for a dibble.
Here is the video The Riven Word made of Peter Follansbee pounding a section of ash into basket splints. Even if you will never make a basket from white ash splints, you will appreciate Peter’s admiration for this incredible tree, and his deeply abiding respect for its wonderful qualities. If we are seeing the last days of fraxinus americana L. , I cannot think of a better appreciation for this tree’s unique gifts to us.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
6 months later, co-worker Eva Lipton is still in our thoughts and prayers:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Team-EVA/223963567711425?fref=ts
There will be a gospel-choir fundraiser on Saturday, November 10th in Marshfield. Gospel in Marsh-Vegas??? It promises to be an amazing event to support Eva and her family. Click the link below for more information:
https://www.facebook.com/events/122152571266813/
Tags: Peter Follansbee, Plimoth Plantation
great lesson and thanks for keeping us up to date about Eva–
Thanks France.
I’m scared to death of the Emerald ash borer. It is not yet here at all, but if it comes, it will put anybody interested in local traditional green woodworking in Northern Vt out of business. When the first white settlers came here from southern New England, they were well north of the range of white oak and quickly adapted ash to oaks traditional uses. The most striking example that comes to my mind is the use of White Ash as timber framing pegs.
When we were building our reconstructed barn at the Old Stone House museum, myself and another fellow went to local middle schools, where we taught the students to rive and drawknive most of the some 350 pegs used to hold the frame together together. What would we have done with the ash gone? For more info on the project, go to http://www.Oldstonehousemuseum.org.
BTW, “Spaceman” Bill Lee lives not far from here. From what he told me, he has started his own line of baseball bats that are made of Yellow Birch. As of three or four years ago, David Ortiz uses one.
You mean Bill– Spaceman, Lollipop Curve, If Billy Martin is a rat what is Don Zimmer? A gerbil? oldest man to win a professional baseball game last month at the age of 65–Lee? I seem to recall that he wrote a piece of fiction about Ted Williams purposely driving a ball foul into the stands to hit and kill Hitler who was in attendance at a game at Fenway. Brilliant stuff. I’d like to learn more about Bill Lee’s birch bats–do you have a contact, Rick? I didn’t realize that Papi used a yellow birch bat as well. I wonder if it’s just for bp or if MLB allows it in games already.
Thanks for your comments, Rick. Always good to hear from you. And thanks for forwarding the link to the Old Stone House museum.
This grieves me. I’d rather lose almost any species rather than a great hardwood tree. The loss of the chestnut still rings through our culture here. There’s a great poem about firewood, good kinds and bad, and the final couplet has always stuck with me:
“…but ash wood wet and ash wood dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.”
Great stuff, RMcNabb. Thanks.
Yet, chestnut struggles on and we are breeding resistant varieties of American chestnut, indeed, have bred several already and we are working on hundreds more. Perhaps, we may break this cycle of loss for some trees and our forests may repair. See http://www.acf.org
We have a Liberty Elm on our site here in Plimoth and it’s flourishing. Thanks for the uplifting spin, GRobertson. I feel like the tone of this last post was a bit dreary, given the subject matter. And thanks for the link to the American Chestnut Foundation.
Luckily it hasn’t been felt yet here in the UK – Only in a few areas I think. I really hope this doesn’t do what dutch elm desiease did, I always think it’s a little sad that I look at different countryside from what my grandfather did, and ash features so much in hedgerows and woods over here, much like elem used to.
We’ll all remain calm and carry on, Kev. Keep us posted on any doings on your side if you would. Good to hear from you!
Yeah, the EAB is bad news. We’ve got it up in Ontario and between that and the Asian Longhorned Beetle there’s great concern for the health of the boreal forest that makes up much of the landscape of Ontario and Quebec. Still waiting on a clear plan, but right now it’s mostly scorched earth policy with a sprinkling of tree innoculations. Not very hopeful in the long term.