FLOWERING, OR MANA, ASH TREE

A SEASONALLY COOL SUMMER MORNING

FLOWERING ASH...

PANICLES OF FLOWERS

Sunday, 8:00 AM.  60 degrees F, wind WSW, lightly breezy.  The sky is cloudless, the humidity 75% and the barometer is rising.  It is a fine day, pleasantly cool at present.
    While parked outside the M&I Bank in Ashland yesterday waiting for Joan, I noticed a city tree on Main Street that was flowering, bearing upright panicles of greenish white blooms that appeared to be just opening.  Too late for a tree lilac, I thought it might be a scholar tree, Sophora Japonica.  Upon closer examination I came to the conclusion it was a flowering ash tree, Fraxinus ornus, in the olive family.  It has opposite, pinnately compound leaves, and the blooms are sprays of mildly fragrant whitish flowers.  I am somewhat familiar with the species, which is of southern European and Middle Eastern origin and is sometimes used as a street and ornamental tree in Europe, but had never before seen it in flower.  It is also called the manna tree for the sweet exudation of sap that accumulates when the bark is slit.  It is grown commercially for this product in Sicily, and is both a confection and a mild laxative, often recommended for children for that purpoe..  It appears to be perfectly hardy in Ashland on the south shore of Lake Superior’s Chequamagon Bay. It  makes a nice small street tree, with a rounded crown, growing to perhaps 25 ft. this far north.  And, I tip my cap to the forester who planted it some years ago.
    Political commentary: nemer on Sunday!