Can Green Ash be a shrub?

I was fairly confident this plant is Fraxinus pennsylcanica. It has the correct leaves, leaf scars, buds, new growth colour, flowers, etc. However it is a large shrub not a tree. Can Green Ash be shrubs or are they only tree?

 

F. pennsylvanica 'Johnson', sold under the Leprechaun trademark is one such example. Growers put it on top of normal trunks in order to produce compact street trees.

 

Here is a picture

 

Sure doesn't look like a green ash. Can you add some close ups?

 

Though smaller, this cultivar still appears to have tree-form.
http://www.jfschmidt.com/introductions/leprechaun/index.html

(Edit: It is said on various sites to be a miniaturized ash, at 1/2 to 1/3 the scale of the usual... so I assume it would still be a small tree, as opposed to a multi-stemmed shrub?)

 

They are grafting them onto trunks of other ashes, as I related above. On their own roots they would look more or less like the parts above the trunks.

 

I wonder if that cultivar is sold here? The cold, dry and chinook-prone climate tends to severely limit the species and cultivar choices that are available. (Vendors don't tend to take too many chances!)
Do you think the shrub in the photo looks like a green ash?

 

Curious... Would this cultivar not still have tree form if grown on its own without grafting onto a standard? (Just thinking of dwarf birches, e.g. Betula apoiensis, which is miniaturized yet still "tree form" in the sense of having a single trunk, as opposed to multi-trunk shrub form.) The shrub in question has multiple stems.

 

The birch is merely a small-growing tree, still having apical dominance whereas low-branching, more or less trunk-less/short-trunked forms such as what became 'Johnson' are aberrations. Many similar examples have been grown for years, 'Coralcole' crabapple, 'Globosum' Norway maple, 'Nana' catalpa, 'Umbraculifera' black locust and so on. There is no reason to think other shrubby variants of green ash do not also occur - for example, the one that was made into 'Johnson'. It would be expected that inability to compete with taller trees and shrubs for light and probably other factors would make dwarf, slow-growing or shrubby mutants rarer in the wild than they can sometimes be in nursery seed beds.

 

So, back to the specimen at hand... does it look like a green ash to you?

Jaclynf, do you have any close-up photos that you could post of the features you mention?

 

I don't know about cultivated plants but as far as I know the only wild Green Ash are trees.

 

'Johnson' is based on a chance seedling, and not a branch sport.

 

I really appreciate everyone's input. Sorry for the delay in responding. I was away over the Easter break. Here are some close ups of bud, twig, leaf scar, etc. I hope they are helpful.

Thank you

Jaclyn

 

As I suspected from the conformation in the first photo, it's a lilac, Syringa vulgaris.

 

Buds, branching and leaves not those of Syringa vulgaris. Since fruits are lilac-like, must be one of the others, maybe S. x prestoniae.

 

Dang, you are good! (It had crossed my mind to include "or hybrid thereof" which would still have been wrong though.)
Yes, Preston lilacs are very commonly grown around here.

 

Thank you everyone! I am confident now it's a lilac. Here are some seed heads if that helps identify it further.
Cheers.