Lisa Samson - Epitaph for the Ash - In Search of Recovery and Renewal

I was too young to understand the full impact of Dutch Elm Disease, but as I grew up and my own interest in trees deepened, I often referred to Gerald’s books. His death in a car crash in 1988 fuelled my intention to learn more about his obsession with them. Now, nearly three decades later, it is predicted that Chalara fraxinea , the fungus that causes Hymenoscyphus fraxineus or Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus – Ash Dieback – will ravage the ash trees, again changing Britain’s landscape. It was found in the wild in Britain in 2012, in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk, and since then it has spread relatively quickly, with new cases reported often in the press. My home county of Yorkshire will seem barren without the ancient ashes protruding from limestone scars and chalky cliff faces, or spreading their fine canopies over the hedgerows.

The ash’s status as a ‘magic’ tree with healing properties gives it a fascinating history. Gerald suggests that in Neolithic times ‘the Ash may have been sacred’. Druids regard it as such, and in Norse mythology the ash was the Tree of Life, the most important living thing besides humans. It is one of our strongest trees, used for framework in vehicles and tool handles, but craftspeople and manufacturers are already using other materials.

Across the length and breadth of Britain place names are associated with the ash – Ash, Ashburton, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Ashbourne, Ash-cum-Ridley, Ashover, Ashwater, Ashtead, Ashkirk, Ashcot, Ashwell – anthropological mnemonics linking people to their places. Some will have been named after self-sown ash seeds that blew on the wind, others for the ash their inhabitants cultivated, but all bear testimony to the part the ash has played in our civilization.

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