ASH TREE SPECIES IN ONTARIO (Fraxinus spp.)

   

White Ash (Fraxinus americana)        Red Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica)        Blue Ash (Fraxinus quadrangulata)

   

Black ash (Fraxinus nigra)                Pumpkin Ash (Fraxinus profunda)            European Ash (Fraxinus excelsior)

Photo credit: Ken Marchant

The following excerpt is a great overview on Ontario’s native ash trees by OMNR’s Martin Streit and Lynn Farintosh:

Ash in Ontario

There are five native species of ash in Ontario.  They are:  white, red (often called green), black, pumpkin, and blue.  In Ontario, pumpkin (Fraxinus profunda Bush) and blue ash (Fraxinus quadrangulata Michx.) are rare and are limited to the southwest of the province.  Black ash, (Fraxinus nigra Marsh.) is usually found in swampy areas from the southern most portions of Ontario up into the boreal forest (Farrar, 1995).  Red ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marsh) is often called green ash, but green ash is actually a hairless variety of red ash (Farrar, 1995 and Peattie, 1991) that likely originated in the mid-western prairie portion of the species’ range (Waldron, 1997).  Red ash grows throughout the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest Regions, usually along river banks and lake shores and can also be found in uplands sites, if the competition isn’t too great (Burns et al, 1990).

Green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvannia var. subintegerrima (Vahl) Fern.) is often used as an ornamental tree on city streets and parks (Farrar, 1995). It is commonly found in woodlots, fencerows and regenerating in plantations of south eastern Ontario, where it can move into abandoned farmland and form near pure stands.   White ash, Fraxinus americana L., is the most widely distributed of the ashes in Ontario.  It grows throughout most of the Deciduous and Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Forest Regions.  It grows best on deep, moist, well drained soils (Farrar 1995 and Burns et al, 1990).  White and green ash are both mid-tolerant of shade and are usually found in early successional forest stages or where gaps occur in mature forest.

References cited

Burns, Russell M., and Barbara H. Honkala, tech. coords.  1990.  Silvics of North America: 2. Hardwoods. Agriculture Handbook 654.  U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Washington, DC. vol.2, 877 p.

Farrar, J.L.  1995.  Trees in Canada.  Fitzhenry and Whiteside Ltd. and the Canadian Forest Service.  502pp.

Peattie, Donald Culross, 1991.  A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America.  Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, MA.  606pp.

Waldron, Gerry E.  1997.  The Tree Book, Tree Species and Restoration Guide for the Windsor-Essex Region.  Project Green Incorporated. Windsor, ON.  219pp.