The flowers of the Ash are very poor affairs, for they have neither calyx nor corolla, though their association in large clusters makes them fairly conspicuous as they droop from the sides of the branches in April or May. Stamens and pistils are borne by the same or separate flowers, and both kinds or one only may be found on the same tree. The pistil is a greenish yellow pear-shaped body, and the stamens are very dark purple. The flowers are succeeded by bunches of "keys"--each one, when ripe, a narrow-oblong scale, with a notch at one end and a seed lying within at the other. The correct name for these is samaras. In looking at a bunch of these "keys"--they are something like the keys to the primitive locks of the ancients--one is struck by the fact that they all have a little twist in the wing or sail, which causes the "key" to spin steadily on the wind and reach the earth seed-end first. They are, therefore, sometimes known as "spinners." These are ripe in October; but though the trees produce seed nearly every year after the fortieth, one may chance to look at a dozen Ashes before he comes upon one that bears a seed. The reason for this lies in the fact that some trees have no female blossoms. The seeds do not germinate until the second spring after they are sown. [Illustration: _Pl. 41._ Bole of Ash.] Much of the Ash-wood in use for carriage-poles, oars, axe and hammer shafts, and similar purposes where only small diameters are needed, are obtained from Ash-coppice, which rapidly produces well-developed poles. So strong and elastic is the Ash timber when taken from young trees, that it is claimed it will bear a greater strain than any other European timber of equal thickness. The Ash is not one of the long-lived trees, its natural span being about two hundred years, but its wood is regarded as best between the ages of thirty and sixty years. [Illustration: _Pl. 42._ Ash--winter.]