Ash tree flowers have no petals and no sepals; they have only a green, bottle-shaped seed-vessel (7), which stands between two stamens with pale green stalks and fat purple-coloured heads. Sometimes there is not even a seed-vessel; you may find nothing but a crowded bunch of purply stamens. This latter kind of Ash tree cannot produce any fruit. In a few weeks these stamens shrivel and the purple heads fall off. The seed-vessels, too, become very different. They change into long flat green wings, which hang each from its own stalk in a cluster at the end or from the side of the branch. These silky green wings are called “keys” (3), or in some places, “spinners”; at one end they are notched, and at the other, close to the stalk, lies the fruit. Long after the Ash tree leaves are withered and fallen you can see these bunches of “keys,” grown brown and shrivelled, still clinging to the branches. When wintry weather comes they are torn off by the wind, and the winged seed, spinning round and round in the air, is carried a long distance. You will see Ash trees growing high up on rocky precipices, where only the birds or the wind could have left the seed. By the month of May, when the keys of the Ash are fully formed, the green leaves (2) begin to appear. They are beautiful feathery leaves, full of lightness, and grace, and strength. Each leaf is made up of from four to eleven pairs of leaflets, shaped like a lance, with toothed edges, and these are placed opposite each other on a central stalk: there is nearly always a single leaflet at the end. The leaves are pale green, and when they first open you see a soft browny down on the leaf ribs, but this soon wears off. They droop gracefully from the twigs, which you can now see require to be stout and strong to carry such large wind-tossed feathers. But the Ash tree leaves are among the first to fall. Whenever the cold winds come they wither, and a single night of frost will strew them in hundreds on the ground. Where the leaf stalk joined the twig you will see a curious scar (5) shaped like a horse-shoe, and next year a black bud will appear inside this scar. The Ash tree will live for several hundred years. It is not fully grown up till it is forty or fifty years old, and till then you will not find any bunches of keys, with their seeds, growing on the tree. [Illustration: PLATE X THE FIELD MAPLE 1. Field Maple in Autumn 2. Leaf Spray 3. Flower Spike 4. Fruit] Notice that the ground beneath the branches of the Ash tree is usually bare. Many of its roots spread out to a great distance close below the surface, and they are so greedy, and require so much nourishment for the tree, that there is none left for other plants. Some farmers think that the raindrops which drip from the feathery Ash leaves are hurtful to other plants, so they are unwilling to plant Ash trees in their fields and hedgerows.