The tree of life fights on

EIGHT years ago, it was rare to hear unqualified praise for our native ash tree, Fraxinus excelsior. Yes, it was handsome, but it seeded itself around with a promiscuity that made sycamore seem restrained. The resulting weeds, as its seedlings were usually declared, grew swiftly into sturdy saplings that required eradication in its root sense: cutting them down merely produced a miniature wood pasture.

‘No tree features more often in British place names than Fraxinus excelsior’

And that was our problem with ash—its irrepressible vitality. There were so many ash trees—according to surveys in 2013 and 2015, more than 126 million trees of and 1.3 billion saplings and seedlings in UK woodlands of 1.2 acres and larger. For other UK sites, wild and cultivated, the estimated total was between 27 and 60 million ash trees and up to 400 million saplings and seedlings. Their legions advanced with all-conquering vigour, sometimes overwhelming rarer and less assertive species or colonising places disdained by more decorous trees. Also against them was their lifespan—seldom more than 300 years for examples that had never been lopped, ‘maidens’, as arboriculturists term them. Alongside our ancient yews and oaks, even the oldest of these maids seemed coltish and ineligible for the honours awarded