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HARDWOOD FOREST The Basket Tree Québec's southern forests contain three species of ash, namely the white ash, the red ash and the black ash. The black ash, a tree that grows to a height of 20 metres, has a long, spindly trunk, and lives in full sunlight along watercourses or in marshy woodlands, mixed with other species. It provides thin, flexible strips of wood that the Abenaki weave with vanilla grass to make baskets similar to those of the Huron-Wendat and Micmac. The white ash, easy to bend, is used by the Abenaki and Malecite to make snowshoes, and by the Micmac to make tool handles. An Abenaki legend... In the beginning, there were only plants and animals on the Earth. The Great Spirit, satisfied but bored, also wanted humans to live there, and he sculpted them from a large straight ash, or mkazawi maahlakws. It was thus that the People of the East were born, and their origin explains the Abenaki people's special relationship with the ash.

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