Why is the long gun in the hand of the general so resilient?

When I was a child, I especially liked to listen to critical books, especially the big gun barrel books on horseback fighting, such as Shuo Yue, Shuo Tang, and Yang Jia Jiang. The characters in these books have one thing in common, that is, the generals with long guns are born with the temperament of three protagonists, but those with spears are not.

The difference between the gun and the spear in the book is mainly the material of the long pole, the spear is used to charge and dash, it needs a hard pole, and jujube wood is often used, while the gun is to show the martial arts of the character, and it needs toughness, so you have to use ash pole, that is, the wood of ash tree.

Ash tree. Picture: Xemenendura / wikimedia

If the flowers are not beautiful, the wind will help.

Ash Fraxinus chinensis is a plant of the genus Oleaceae [ch é n]. This genus is widely distributed in the north temperate zone, collectively known as ash in English, derived from the Latin word for "spear". It seems that the ancient Europeans probably used it as a long-pole weapon.

The gray-brown bark of the ash tree has obvious small longitudinal cracks, and the branches are curved in a small arc, stretching around like a column of water in a fountain, with very few curvature [qi ú]. Ash has an odd number of pinnately compound leaves, and the leaf axis also has an elegant Radian, with the base of each leaflet slightly upward.

Every spring is the flowering period of ash trees, and inflorescences grow on the new branches of the year. Dioecious plants, both female and male flowers are very small, male flowers gather into a green and reddish mass, and female inflorescences are loose spikes.

Male inflorescences of ash trees. Picture: oleaceae.info

Because they are wind-pollinated flowers and do not have a gorgeous Corolla that attracts insects, ash flowers are often in their fruiting stage when they are noticed. The fruit is a small spoon-like slender Samara, hanging in a string from the branches of the female tree, turning brown when it is ripe and falling to the ground in autumn.

The slender one is the Samara of ash. Picture: Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz / wikimedia

Where does White Wax come from?

The candles used by Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries were mainly made of yellow beeswax; there was also a kind of white wax traded in the East, which had a high melting point and hard texture, and the candle maker thought it was the product of secondary bleaching of beeswax by Easterners.

Beeswax at room temperature. Picture: Frank Mikley / wikimedia

The white wax that first spread to Europe may have been transported through Japan, so Europeans thought that Japan also produced this wax and that it was plant wax from some kind of tree, but they later learned that both were wrong.

White wax is not bleached beeswax. Picture: yamakei.jp

It is true that ash is related to ash trees, but it is not directly produced by ash trees. At that time, it was only produced in China.

The full name of white wax should be called insect white wax, which is made by a kind of Homoptera insect-white wax bug. The second instar male of the white wax bug secretes and accumulates wax filaments on the body surface, and then forms dense wax flowers. People collect wax flowers and boil out high-purity wax, that is, white wax. Ash tree is the main host of ash insect, hence its name.

FE~FA3 is the life history of female and ME~MA is the life history of male. Picture: Pu Yang,et al./Scientific Reports (2015)

White wax bugs gathered together. Picture: geocities.jp

Our ancestors had a long history of using white wax, which was recorded in the documents of the Wei and Jin dynasties, and people began to breed white wax insects by the end of the Southern Song Dynasty at the latest.

Described in the sequel to Guisin's Miscellaneous knowledge. Grain in Beard used yellow straw cloth as a small capsule to store more than a dozen worms, which hung all over the trees. by May, there were hundreds of worms in each son, like ant midges [milled ng], leaving white feces among the branches, that is, white wax. " . Although wax is mistaken for insect dung here, the description of the stocking and harvest of white wax insects is very accurate. By the Ming and Qing dynasties, insect cultivation and wax collection had become a special field of agricultural production in many places in southwest China.

Young man, do you want some wax or a gun?

Ash wood is white, long fiber, good toughness, easy to process, can be used to weave baskets, or a good material for long gun handle. Whenever I see Ron holding a white wax wand in the Harry Potter series, the image of a young warrior with a silver gun on a white horse comes to mind.

Boy, silver gun, all that's missing is a white horse. Picture: twitter

The wood state of ash trees is mostly ash sticks, which is not a stick made by cutting down ash trees and then cutting them into strips, but a characteristic cultivation method in Henan, Shandong and other places. Ash trees have a strong ability to branch when they are young. By cutting down many times, people cultivate them into clumps of small shrubs to protect the field against the wind. Once cut every few years, they can harvest a lot of straight young tree trunks. Peeled and dried is the ash pole.

White wax rod. Picture: 1688.com

There is no ash tree in Europe and America, but many of its relatives are close relatives. Although they can not produce wax, the wood is not much different. Since ancient times, it has been used in various occasions and appeared in every corner of the temple of civilization.

One of the most famous is the Norse mythological world tree Yggdrasill, a huge European ash tree F. excelsior whose branches connect nine worlds, and the gods come at dusk when their roots are bitten off. European ash trees are also an important source of wood. Instead of cultivating ash poles, Europeans directly saw adult trees into boards to make furniture and flooring.

The world tree in Nordic mythology. Picture: rebloggy.com

Now in the domestic floor market, the name "ash wood" can not only refer to imported European ash wood, but also generally refer to all kinds of wood, which brings confusion to consumers.

The most easily confused with imported ash wood is Fraxinus mandshurica F.mandshurica. Fraxinus mandshurica is mainly distributed in the north of China, especially in the northeast, which is one of the three broad-leaved hardwoods in the northeast. Due to excessive felling and utilization, the number of big trees has decreased sharply, and the renewal of young trees is insufficient, so their survival has been greatly threatened and has been listed as a key protected tree species. At present, most of the Fraxinus mandshurica wood on the market comes from Russia.

Manchurian ash. Picture: Herman, D.E. Dint et al./North Dakota tree handbook

There are many people of Fraxinus mandshurica who are as threatened as Fraxinus mandshurica, such as Fraxinus mandshurica F. hupehensis, whose natural distribution is only in the southern foothills of Dahong Mountain in Hubei Province and was named in 1980.

The appearance of the white wax is beautiful, it is easy to take root and resistant to pruning, and the tough wood is also easy to shape, which is a high-grade tree species in the bonsai world. After years of mining, there are few wild resources left, and because of its long dormancy period, it is difficult to restore the population quickly, so it is urgent to strengthen the protection and study of artificial breeding.

Yeah, white wax bonsai. Picture: senbaoyy.cn

This is the 159th article in the fourth year of the species calendar, from @ Desert Porcupine, author of the species calendar.

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Osmanthus fragrans of Oleaceae