There are five well-known species of this genus (Fraxinus Americana), and they occupy an important place as valuable timber trees. This is especially true of the white ash, more commonly called the American ash. Of this tree the late Arthur Bryant, Sr., said in his Book on Trees: "It is one of the most valuable and worthy of culture for the quality of its wood and the rapidity of its growth. When full grown it is one of the largest of the trees of our forests. * * * * The prairie soils of Iowa and Central and Northern Illinois are well adapted to the growth of the white ash."
It is a strange and almost an unheard of thing for any one to say a good word for the "tree peddler" but I am going to say it if it breaks the heart of every horticultural baby in the land. Since a time to which the memory of man runneth not back, the poor "tree peddler" has been abused and maligned by horticultural speakers and writers. In conventions he has been ridiculed and denounced. Every cross-road nursery-man not possessed of stock sufficient to warrant a line of advertising even in his local paper, nor business force enough to send an agent through his own neighborhood to take orders for trees, has spoken in a horticultural meeting or written a letter to his favorite paper, warning the farmers against the wiles of the oily tongued fellow with colored fruit plates, specimens of preserved fruits, and an order book for trees, shrubs, and vines. And I think I have known of some of the big fish in the nursery business who with one end of their tongues have lashed some other big fish in the same business for employing irresponsible agents to sell stock for them, while with the other end they were commanding a small army of the same class of agents to go forth into all the world and preach the gospel of tree planting and--sell trees. Others have sold and continue to sell trees to peddlers without limit, for cash, and of any and all varieties called for, while they denounced the system of peddling in unmeasured terms. Now it is just as possible for a tree peddler to be an honest man as it is for the man who grows trees to sell to be honest. I do not say that all men belonging to either class are honest. It would be equally absurd to say that all of either class are dishonest. I despise the quack, the liar, the deceiver in any business, and I have no respect or love for the man who will sell worthless varieties of trees or wrongly named varieties, knowingly. Honesty here as elsewhere is the best policy. But here is a fact, as I believe: It is better to plant an inferior tree than none at all, and I know of neighbors who would go down into their graves without ever planting a tree if some persuasive peddler had not talked it into them to do so, and these same neighbors now have quite respectable orchards. Here is another fact: One half the orders sent to nursery-men by farmers during the past twenty years have called for varieties utterly worthless for the localities in which they were to be planted. And the tree peddler often gratifies the purchaser by pretending to sell to him a sort which he has made up his mind to have because he knows it was good in his old home a thousand miles away. But the peddler, not having this variety, and knowing that if he did have it it would prove worthless, substitutes a Ben Davis or some other approved variety, and it goes into the ground and in due time produces an abundance of excellent fruit. In this case the peddler does a really good thing. If nursery-men will stop propagating everything but varieties adapted to the country and the markets, and many of them are doing this, the tree peddler will be powerless for mischief--will in fact become a great public benefactor. But so long as nursery-men will continue to grow and sell worthless varieties, and so long as the people will remain in ignorance regarding adaptability, so long will the dishonest peddler remain an unmitigated nuisance and fraud. In brief these three things are wanted: Intelligent and honest nurserymen; orchard planters who either know what varieties are best for them to have, or who are willing to trust the selection to the afore-mentioned intelligent and honest nursery-men; and third, first-class talkers, intelligent as to varieties and methods of culture, who buy only of the intelligent and honest nursery-men, to go through the country and sell trees. It is unfortunate that it takes so many words to express what I wanted to say, but I am done at last.