OLEACE^ 



761 



surface, ^'-V long, \'-\' wide, and nearly sessile. Flowers unknown. Fruit oblong- 

 linear to obovate, ^' |' long, the thin wing decurrent on the short terete body, rounded 

 and emarginate at the apex tipped with the elongated persistent conspicuous style, 

 and about ^' wide. 



A tree, rarely 20-25 high, with a trunk 8-10 long and occasionally 8' in di- 

 ameter, and slender terete branchlets dark green and puberulous when they first 

 appear, soon becoming ashy gray and roughened by numerous minute pale elevated 

 lenticels, gradually turning dark gray or brown in their second and third years; 

 more often a shrub, with numerous slender erect stems 4-12 tall. Winter-buds 

 terminal, about ^' long, obtuse, with thick ovate light brown pubescent scales 

 rounded on the back. Bark of the trunk thin, gray or light brown tinged with red, 

 separating on the surface into large papery scales. Wood heavy, hard, close- 

 grained, brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Dry limestone cliffs and ledges; valley of the Rio Grande, west- 

 ern Texas from the mouth of the San Pedro to that of the Pecos River, and south- 

 ward on the mountains of northern Mexico; apparently most common and of its 

 largest size on the Sierra Nevada of Nuevo Leon; still very imperfectly known. 



2. Flowers without petals. 



*Body of the fruit compressed. 



3. Fraxinus quadrangulata, Michx. Blue Ash. 



Leaves 8'-12' long, with slender petioles glabrous or puberulous toward the base, 

 and 5-9 ovate-oblong to lanceolate long-pointed leaflets unequally rounded or wedge- 

 shaped at the base, and serrate, with incurved teeth, when they unfold coated on the 



lower surface with thick brown tomentum, and at maturity thick and firm, yellow- 

 green and glabrous above, pale and glabrous or sometimes furnished with tufts of 

 pale hairs along the base of the conspicuous midribs below, 3'-5' long and l'-2' wide, 

 with short broad petiolules grooved on the upper side and 8-12 pairs of veins arcu- 

 ate near the margins, turning pale yellow in the autumn before falling. Flo"wers 

 perfect, appearing as the terminal buds begin to expand, in loose-branched panicles 

 from small obtuse buds in the axils of leaves of the previous year, with broadly ovate 



