The Olive Family (Oleaceae)
	Family Description The members of this family are all trees or shrubs with hard wood and opposite leaves. The flowers are four-parted and the petals are joined together at the bottom. The fruit takes the form of either a berry, a capsule, or it is attached to a wing.
	Ash Fraxinus excelsior Ash is a large deciduous tree, which can grow to great heights of up to 40 metres. Ash is found all over the place. It has been heavily pollarded and is coppiced commercially.
	Ash is often seen as one of the first trees, growing in developing forests. This tree has enough leaves to create all the energy it needs from the sun, but not so many that it blocks light from reaching the forest floor.This means that slow-growing, shade-tolerant trees, like oak, can grow up through the ash canopy and eventually shades ash out of a wood. This is an example of succession. The twigs and leaves of Ash are poisonous to livestock. The wood is very smooth to the hand. It is used to make fences, billiard cues, hockey sticks and cricket stumps. Some Ash trees have been known to live for 230 years.
	Habitat	Moist, rich limestone soils. Common in hedges, woods, roadsides, towns, city parks and churchyards. Sometimes found near streams.

	Special features	The leaves are pinnate, with pointed and toothed leaflets. The bark is pale grey. It is smooth in young trees and ridged in older trees. The leaf buds have a distinctive black colour, with the twigs on lower branches often curving upwards at the ends.
	Reproduction	The purple flowers can be all male, all female or both sexes. The fruit, called a "key" is a wing containing one seed which spins off in the wind.
	Distribution	Seasonal Dense clusters of purple flowers cover the tree in April before the leaves open. Ash is usually the last tree to produce leaves, which may be as late as June. The so-called green "keys" containing the seed develop by July and turn brown by autumn. Some of the keys stay on the tree all winter and only fall off, when the tree begins to grow again in the Spring. Ash can be recognised in the winter by the hard, black buds on smooth, grey twigs. Geographical Ash can be found throughout Britain. Wild woods of Ash are found on the limestone of the Cotswolds, Derbyshire and Yorkshire.
	Folklore	According to myth, ancient Gods, after making the earth and the heavens, found two tree trunks by the sea and turned them into the first man and woman. According to this myth, it was an Ash tree trunk that was turned into the man. It was believed that illnesses could be given away to the Ash. People used to chant: "Ashen tree, ashen tree Pray buy these warts of me." There is an old saying, which says: "Oak before Ash, we're in for a splash, Ash before oak, we're in for a soak." Ash and Oak develop leaves at about the same time. If the Ash develops leaves before the oak, this saying suggests it will be a very wet year.
	Fun Fact	Individual trees sometimes alternate sexes, sometimes producing all female flowers and at other times producing all male flowers.