The old oak ash nexus

Ash flowers

In the perennial race to be be first out it appears that this year, despite flowering away madly, the ash is showing no leaves while the oak is well on the way. Those who study these things for a living (now that's a job I could do!) say oaks are coming into leaf nearly two weeks earlier than they did thirty years ago and ash about week earlier. That'll be global warming, they say,  or climate change as it's now politically correct to call it. And if you're a student of racing form the last time Ash beat Oak was in 1986. Ash is also under attack from a fungus threatening to make it extinct in the UK so this may become a one-tree race in the not so distant future.

Oak

The weekend in Black and White is here.