The Willow-Leaved Ash

At twenty-four metres, the Willow-Leaved Ash is the tallest of six trees in York Museum Gardens officially recognised as Yorkshire county champions, the largest recorded example of its kind anywhere in the county. The Tree Register keeps that list, and this ash earned its place with a trunk that measures three and a half metres round and leaves noticeably narrower than an ordinary ash's, more like a willow's, which is where the name comes from. It was planted sometime in the gardens' first century, when the Yorkshire Philosophical Society was still filling the grounds it had laid out around the ruins of St Mary's Abbey with specimens gathered from across the world. The Tree Register puts its age at the top of the 80 to 150 year range shared by the garden's six champions, and its own crown agrees: the upper branches have started to die back, the way an ash tree typically signals it is entering its final decades. It still stands as one of the most noticeable trees in the garden, tall enough to be seen from most of the surrounding lawns. Visit while the crown holds. A champion tree's title from the Tree Register is a record of what was measured and when, never a promise of permanence.