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   There are supposedly four of the five species of ash in Alabama that are found in or near the northeast corner of the state, while the other species, Carolina ash, Fraxinus caroliniana, is recorded in the southwest part of the state from Tuscaloosa County to the Baldwin County and Mobile County.  The four species are white ash, F. americana, green ash, F. pennsylvanica, blue ash, F. quadrangulata, and pumpkin ash, F. profunda.  They can almost be distinguished from one another by their habitat where the specific epithet of pumpkin ash means deep as in a swamp since it is an obligate wetland indicator species, while green ash is a facultative wetland indicator species often growing in flood plains or near streams, and white ash is a facultative upland indicator species, but blue ash does not have an indicator status.  Instead blue ash has the most unique identifier, as the specific epithet indicates, square twigs.  The relative color of the upper and lower surfaces of the opposite compound leaves has long been used as a key to distinguish green and white ash although this is not a reliable method.  Instead the diameter of new shoots relative to that of the previous year is preferred where on green ash they are about equal in size while other keys for green ash are semicircular leaf scars verses notched and yellow fall color versus red.  Oddly green ash as well as pumpkin ash is called red ash, additionally black ash, F. nigra, is found further north.  The Alabama state champion ash trees are both in Wilcox County where the green ash is 80 feet tall, 168 inches around and has an average limb spread of 83 feet, while the white ash is 103 feet tall, has a 107 inch girth, and average limb spread of 64 feet. I'm looking for a blue ash to nominate but the only one I have ever saw was a seedling while if any mature specimens were nearby they were all to tall for me to easily check the defininitive key.

   Ash wood is most famously use for baseball bats.  It can also be steamed and bent in to various shapes such as canoe gunwales and sled skids.  An invasive insect pest, the emerald ash borer, has the potential to virtually eliminate ash from our forest and landscapes similar to what chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease respectively did to the American chestnut, Castanea dentata, and American elm, Ulmus americana. 

      Volunteers were not allowed to replace the resulting dead ash trees in Detroit, Michigan, because they would be taking jobs from about six dozen unionized urban foresters that the city employees to apparently do nothing except sit on their ‘ash’ (pun intended) filing grievances against anybody that tries to maintain or plant a tree, which makes me wonder about the logic since it seems more like this grevious activity actually creates the work for their only job function.  Oh never mind, I almost forgot that union members avoid work at all cost to prove that their job is protected by the union.

  Hint:  refuse to hire union sympathetic landscapers because they will just cost you more money by making repetitive and/or unnecessary task for themselves ranging from lawn work to a hyperbolic example of an insecticide spray program for a butterfly garden; better yet check your landscapers Alabama license for the categories of design, installation, spraying, and/or tree surgery, because the required qualifications for these licenses are probably much higher than in any of the none right-to-work states that the unions rule.  Please report anybody doing such work without the required license since they will cost you more in the long run despite undercutting the legitimate landscapers and costing us your business until they can't be found due to problems they actually cause that need fixed like a tree that dies because they topped it.