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Ash: Fuinseog: Frazimus exeisior.

A member of the olive family, ash is one of Ireland's native trees being especially venerated for reasons that cannot be explained now. A common tree, its divided leaves in pairs on the stem and easily recognised in winter by its prominent paired blackbuds and in autumn by its winged fruits. It likes lime-rich soils. It can grow up to 40m. Trunk: can be much pollarded. Bark: smooth, grey, becoming rough and slightly fissured. Crown: domed, branches well spaced. Leaves: opposite, with usually 6 - 12 paired leaflets and a leaflet at tip of oblong - oval shape with long slender tip, shallowly toothed, hairy at the base, stalked. Flowers: in rounded purplish clusters, can be male, female or hermaphrodite, before the leaves.

The limestone which underlies almost two-thirds of the surface of Ireland inclusive of Doon produces lime-rich soils conducive to growth of Ash. Its timbers are valued for caman (hurleys for our native games of Camogie and Hurling), tool handles, shafts, carts, oars and agricultural implements, tennis rackets, hockey sticks and billiard cues. The fruit of the Ash are a favourite winter food of bullfinches, which travel in pairs even outside the breeding season. They snap off the seeds of the samaras or 'keys' which their powerful beaks sending the empty ash wings floating from a heavenly orbit!

It is one of the last natives to come into leaf and the leaves usually fall when still green

"Ask before Oak look for a soak

Oak before Ash look for a splash"

Tree-ring evidence suggests that an individual ash tree can live for two to three hundred years. There are many extraordinary folktales and religious rituals associated with Ash trees: in Co. Westmeath "the big tree of Crish-a-wornael"; in Co. Offaly a venerated ash 21 feet, 10 inches in girth and several of the branches were "as gross as the body of the horse!", but, the most extraordinary example must be the "Old Ash of Dominey" at Clare Castle, Co. Galway, which had a girth of 42 feet and in its hollowed cavity a little school had been held for about a quarter of a century.

A register of champion trees is maintained by enthusiasts - the tallest, the broadest, or the oldest. In Mayo, Castlemagarrett, Claremorris, has an Ash tree measuring 119 x 14 ft, 2 inches.

The study of trees is dendrology and the cultivation of trees arboriculture.

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