Fraxinus raywood 'Claret ash'

Last night while studying I learnt that all Fraxinus raywood 'Claret ash' are all grafted onto rootstock.   This means that everysingle Claret Ash is basically a clone.   The original seedling was discovered near a group of assorted ash trees in Sewell's nursery in the Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia about 1910, and later grown at the nearby property Raywood, hence the latin name.  



This really interested me as a couple of years ago when we first moved into our house in Holder, we cut down the 30yr old Claret ash in our front yard . It was a hard decision to remove the tree as I feel so connected to them, but due to the drought it has suffered severely and branches were falling off in the winds and  was quite dangerous. Yep, it had to go, and gee it made the front yard feel empty!   I was at work the day it happened, but dad was passing by our house and took some photos for us - they had abseillers and everything - big job! 


A few weeks later we got a surprise house warming pressie from the lovely Jodie. You guessed it - a Claret ash that her brother Ads had picked from his nursery.  We vowed to take extra special care of it and planted it next to where the old one was removed.  It is now a few years old and is really healthy. 


It is really lovely to know that the new tree is a clone of the tree we removed.  Feels full circle.