12. Var. verrucosa, Desfontaines. Branchlets warty.
13. Certain variegated forms are known, as—var. albo-marginata, leaflets edged with white, and var. albo-variegata, in which the white colour appears as blotches on the leaflets.
Most of the foregoing varieties are of little or no beauty or interest, and do not, so far as we know, become large or shapely trees. (A.H.)
14. Var. pendula, Aiton. The weeping ash in some form or other is found in almost every garden, but rarely as a large tree. Loudon describes several forms of it, and says that the original tree was discovered near Wimpole in Cambridgeshire 150 years or more ago, and was decaying in 1835.
Another form, the Cowpen ash, which grew near Morpeth, is figured by Loudon ;! and I have seen two trees which have naturally assumed a very similar habit. One stands by the road in the village of Ollerton, Notts. The other is in a field at Marsden, in the parish of Rendcombe, Gloucestershire.
A third form, called by Loudon the Kincairney Ash, grew in the parish of Caputh, near Dunkeld, Perthshire, and was distinguished by its alternately pendulous and upright branches. It was propagated at the Perth Nurseries, but I have not noticed any of this variety now in cultivation.
To make an effective tree, the weeping ash should be grafted on a very tall stock, and if the branches are attended to, may be trained into a shady arbour like a great umbrella. But if the stock is also allowed to grow as well as the graft, the effect will be more curious than beautiful; and the weeping ash is not so much admired or planted as it was formerly when trained and clipped trees were more in fashion. At Heanton Satchville, in North Devon, the seat of Lord Clinton, I saw it trained in combination with a trellis of living ashes which were planted all round the central weeping tree, and had their stems woven together when young so as to form the walls of the arbour; but in the course of time this had become ragged; and as the ash does not bear clipping like the beech or hornbeam, I should prefer either of those trees for such a purpose.
By far the finest grafted weeping ash that we know of is growing in the gardens of Elvaston Castle, near Derby, the seat of the Earl of Harrington. It was reported? in 1905 to be 98 feet high, with long weeping branches hanging vertically from the summit of the tree, one of them descending to about 20 feet from the ground ; but when I saw it in 1906 I did not think it was more than about go feet high, the bole, 6 to 7 feet in girth, being straight and clean, (Plate 238.) This tree was grafted by Barron about 1848. Another larger tree also exists here, which has a bole 50 feet by 124 feet, and was apparently grafted with weeping ash at the same time, but in this case the branches of the stock have outgrown the grafts.
In Ireland there is a very handsome and well shaped weeping ash at Castle- wellan, 41 feet high, with a trunk 5 feet in girth with branches hanging to the ground all round it. (H.J.E.)
1 Arb. et Frut. Brit. ii. 1216, f. 1045 (1838).
2 Garden, 1905, lxviii. 400, with figure.
