The numbers aren't good for wagering on survivorship with EAB flying around.

Dan

That's what I suspect, though maybe there's something else I'm overlooking. Do people here consider even consider though a native ash to be worth keeping? Aside from the EAB, are they worth keeping around? Folks here list a lot of desirable trees to plant in the limited space available to a given person, and Ash never seems to be one of them.

I planted a few white ash trees a couple of years ago. Ash trees are very uncommon down here (except maybe green ash along the rivers) so I'm hoping mine will survive since they're isolated. I can only think of a couple of houses in my whole town that have Ash trees in the yard.

I LOVE ash trees. Open grown specimens have massive low branching trunks and many of them branches are as large as any maple. Add in excellent yellow to purple fall color and you got a winner. Then the white ash supplies wood for baseball bats.

Even w/o the dreaded EAB they're not a tree for smaller lots. Mine were planted too close to my home, grew over it and one needed removed. Throw in the threat of EAB killing every white or green ash in the infection zone and I'd limit my ash planting to tree lines or where if it dies 20 years from now I'm not leaving a liability for the next owners of my house.

If you got a place to stick them though I absolutely love mine.

The large red tree in the background is a white ash.
{{gwi:373282}}

The yellow tree over my house is another
{{gwi:406203}}

This "U" shaped leaf scar is the only way I know to tell green and white ash apart
{{gwi:450822}}

The wide spreading tree on the left is another white ash. It has out lived that silver maple on the right which started rotting out from the bottom. I'll have to get some more "naked ash tree" pics this winter. I'm amazed by their heavy wide spreading branches.
{{gwi:450823}}

Ash are planted some down here by developers. They make nice shade trees and don't require a lot of care. EAB is not a problem down here that I know of, but then neither is Dutch Elm Disease. White ash tends to have good color as you can see in the picture above. Green Ash is pretty tough and is an important tree in the prairie/plains states.

I live in the suburbs of Detroit, which was the epicenter of Emerald Ash Borer. Bayer Advanced Systemic Tree and Shrub Insect Killer (Active Ingredient Imadichloprid)seems to have proven to be at least reasonably effective on EAB. I have one that has stayed perfectly healthy, been using this product on it since it came out a few years back. I believe Michigan State is now recommending it for EAB, with the qualifier that its effectiveness may be inconsistent.

But overall, it should work at least until the wee beasties develop resistance.

By the way, EAB doesn't actually kill the tree, just kills the trunk most of the time. There are many forests of ash sprouts all over my area now, trying to regrow from the stumps. Some of them seem to get big enough in a few years to even produce seeds, so I doubt that the ashes are permanently gone, just changed.

I found a nice brochure from several of the midwestern Land Grant university extension services about EAB control, and this was just published in June 2009, so it's current.

Here is a link that might be useful: EAB control brochure

Nice car!