Yeah so ash is in this context is actually 16 different species. Kind of a background species you know it's wood is very much used for many different uses but it's one of those trees that's just kind of everywhere not super noticeable physically but what's happening now is a invasive beetle is killing off ash all 16 different species across North America and so it's one of those things like now that ash is going missing people are really realizing how important it was.

Damn those invasive beetles. There's another person at the circle here black spruce. What should we know about black spruce?

Yeah so where I grew up in Alaska black spruce was kind of characteristic kind of a grungy tree. Lots of kind of small scrawny covered in moss and fuzz just this very kind of thin scraggly looking tree and covers much of Canada stretching all the way from you know Newfoundland to Alaska so just black spruce makes up these massive forests and so it's a really good example of a tree that over the last 10,000 years since the ice retreated after the end of the last ice age

has become just amazingly widespread and common. So black spruce has been quite effective at moving

into friendly territory and thriving. Yeah that's right.