As a new book celebrates the ash tree and charts its fight for survival, Harry Mead points out that dieback is a needless calamity

PERHAPS because it self-seeds very readily, and therefore often springs up where it is unwanted, the ash tree is cast by many people, especially gardeners, as a weed. But it is a splendid native tree. With a crown as magnificent as any, its canopy nevertheless is relatively open and feathery – good for woodland plants.

For versatility, the ash might be supreme. Its wood, tough yet light, is traditionally used for tool handles. Its unmatched burning qualities, which include being the only wood that burns well when still green, made it every baker’s choice for wood-burning ovens.

The ash tree once even provided animal fodder. In the Lake District, in particular, ash trees were pollarded to produce young shoots that were fed to sheep.

In Epitaph for the Ash, author Lisa Samson reveals: “Watendlath was one of the last valleys to continue to feed sheep over winter with its ash trees, but until the early 20th Century lines of lopped ash branches were a common sight in the Lake District, left to feed the flocks over the winter months. This practice dated back to Neolithic times…”

Lisa reveals that the ash was revered by the Vikings. What a shame, then, that it now enjoys so little public esteem. Its current fight for survival against a virulent dieback disease, Chalara fraxinea, first recorded in 2012, hasn’t stirred the popular concern generated by the plight of the elm in the 1970s, or which would meet any threat to the oak.

A celebration as well as elegy, Lisa Samson’s mission in her book is to put that right. And make no mistake. Even if your local ashes appear healthy, their survival is greatly in doubt. Affected sites visited by Lisa range from Devon to Wester Ross. Unless the disease is checked, ashes everywhere will fall victim.

Lisa examines the counter-attack. This includes research on the disease-carrying spores at the (perhaps little known) York-based Food and Environmental Research Agency. Trees resistant to the disease are also being studied, with the aim of breeding an immune variety. The key might be thicker bark, for example.

Lisa, an English language and literature academic, who lectures at Leeds Beckett University, chooses to weave her homage to the ash and rallying call for its survival with an account of her own battle against a brain tumour. It’s a bold gamble, which seems contrived at first. But it works because Lisa feels a passion for trees that is virtually inseparable from her passion for life. “Trees are good company and they do talk if you stop to listen,” she says. What she means is illustrated by a visit to an afflicted ash wood. “I feel as I do when visiting a sick relative or friend in hospital. I want to stay and cheer them up, but I feel helpless.” But as she leaves, she says: “I’m aware of the trees whispering behind me.”

On another occasion, sheltering inside a venerable hollow ash tree, she remarks: “I feel strangely at home, as though the tree is protecting me… I can hardly bear to leave my new home.”

The ash could not have a more deeply-caring advocate. But one waits in vain for Lisa to make what seems a glaring point. Ash dieback arrived here in trees imported from the Netherlands. Since the ash is native and a prolific self-seeder, why were trees brought from abroad? Britain’s gardeners alone could have provided the seedlings for a national ash forest. The dieback is an utterly needless calamity.

  • Epitaph for the Ash by Lisa Samson (4th Estate, £12.99)

Ash dieback in the Dales

  • Ash dieback disease has spread “phenomenally quickly” right across the Yorkshire Dales National Park, hitting its most treasured and ancient woodlands, according to the Park Authority’s senior trees and woodlands officer Geoff Garrett.
  • Infected young ash trees can be seen on roadsides verges all around the park, as well as in woodlands, only six years after the first case of ash dieback was confirmed in the UK.
  • Ancient semi-natural woodland covers about on per cent of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. About 80 per cent of this woodland is made up of ash, making it the iconic tree of the Dales.
  • The National Park Authority has responded to the spread of ash dieback by removing ash from all tree-planting schemes, but there is currently no cure for the disease. “Ash is the dominant tree in the park’s ancient woodlands, supporting a very special cohort of plants and animals," says Geoff. "Over the next 20 years the disease is going to have a devastating impact, so much so that ash will likely become relatively minor in the landscape. Mature trees will take decades to die, but young trees are being killed off very quickly."
  • It is hopes that some ash trees will be resistant to the disease, so research is being carried out to try to identify and develop ash trees that are most tolerant to the disease.

W: yorkshiredales.org.uk