On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 20:00:48 -0600, Rusty Mase wrote:

On 11 Dec 2003 13:11:19 -0800, (Art Vega) wrote:

I planted one of these trees in my front yard
here in Dallas a couple of years ago.

This is (I think) a cultivar of Texas Ash (Fraxinus texanus) and a
western variant of White Ash. So it should be fairly drought
resistent and possibly slow growing.

Fan Tex (Texas) Ash is supposed to be more columnar and faster growing
than the native species and may be a hybrid with the the more eastern
White Ash. So I would recommend you baby this tree a little to see how
it will do. Maybe a little deep root fertilization around the outer
canopy line along with some soil aeration. The ones I see around
Austin tend to be in well drained soils so it is not a real bottomland
tree like White Ash can be.

Rusty Mase
Googling contradicts this--I turned up that the fan-tex is a cultivar
of F. velutina, always grafted onto F. velutina root stock. It was
described as broader/more spreading than it's progenitors.

To answer the original question, I don't know a lot about this tree
specifically (thus the googling) but generally I vote yes for any
attempts to kill an ash and plant an oak or other long-lived tree. In
general, ash trees are sprawling, brittle, short-lived trees that
often have poor branch structure. You may enjoy it for many years but
in the next half-century or so it will begin to decline and the corpse
will cost a fortune to remove.

k
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