Dumb question... What sort of fellow is your friend? Is he a "Grow stuff" sort of fellow - or not? In general - If your friend likes the idea of fruit but has never grown fruit, and you don't really know what he likes... and you REALLY want to get a fruit tree of some sort... Get him a Blueberry... Nearly zero maintenance, they don't get huge, don't make a giant mess, and the odds of getting good fruit are pretty high. On to the rest of my opinion... One thing to think about maintenance wise is dumping piles of junk on the ground that your buddy will have to attend to... Your friend may well end up cursing you each fall as they have to go pick up a ton of spiny, bug filled, staining, or stinky debris off the yard.... ESPECIALLY SO with Chestnuts - as a mature tree will dump THOUSANDS of spiny witches eggs on the ground... These are extraordinarily painful to touch - much less if you happen to step on one... Picking them up off the ground requires gloves! Personally... My opinion - don't gift a Chestnut unless your friend really wants a Chestnut and knows what he is in for... Walnuts produce BASEBALLS with THICK husks that drop all over the place - and their husks produce a ton of black, stinky, permanent staining goo that gets all over everything... Black walnuts are especially bad in this regard... Their leaves also stain EVERYTHING! In this regard - I would consider a Pecan before a walnut.. Mess wise - many "Large fruit" trees can make a big mess if you aren't committed to cleaning up after them.... Think of all he old Apple and Pear trees that folks cut down because they shower the yard annually with apple and pear slime.... More so with Mulberries and their Purple Stain! Thanks

The black wire running off of your coil is a grounding lead and it is meant to kill the engine. When that wire is connected to ground, it keeps the coil from firing. It is the way that the ignition switch turns off the engine. Disconnect both of the black wire leads coming off the coils and make sure they aren't touching any metal on the engine or tractor frame. Now try starting the engine. If it starts and runs fine then either you have the black wires connected to the ignition switch wrong or you have a short in the wires somewhere. Just a heads up when you try this though. You will not be able to turn off your engine with the ignition switch with both those leads disconnected. You will need to fully engage the choke on the carburator to do it. Most newer tractors will choke off the carburator when the throttle lever is pushed all the way up. Keith

Thanks all. Tried crushing the leaves, but they didn't seem to smell like much of anything to us. The other particular characteristics I noticed today are: leaflet joints (point where leaflet attaches to twig) are a dark purple/brown color, and new leaves seem to be a reddish color. Number of leaflets varies by leaf, but nine or eleven seems to be the norm, with a few with seven. Unfortunately we didn't pay attention to leaf colors last fall, and it hasn't had any flowers yet. White ash or something similar looks like a strong contender, from what I'm seeing online. Would it be unusual to find these in Northern California? I also haven't seen anything in any of the ash descriptions that suggests it has the same toxicity problems that ailanthus and walnut do for other plants, so it sounds like we don't need to be as concerned about removing it for that reason...? In case others can't see the photos either, I'm linking to the one of the bark below. Also shows a couple scars, though I had a hard time telling a pattern for sure, not knowing exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks for all of the help! Here is a link that might be useful:

Prairiefire crab has nice persistent fruit and great disease resistance, not to mention the beautiful pinkish red spring bloom. The only drawback in this area (a bit north of you) has been canker, which has been more frequent here. This area sometimes gets fairly large hail, which has been blamed for the canker problem on Prairiefire. I'm not sure where the 10' Oklahoma redbud comes from as mine is easily 20' tall, but it is in a fairly protected location. It does tend to be shorter if fully exposed to sun and wind. The J. Frank Schmidt & Son company has an excellent guide on flowering crabs at http://www.jfschmidt.com/pdfs/JFS_CRAB_CHART.pdf - it might help you select a "non-messy" flowering crab with the right height and flower color.