770 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



marked by occasional lenticels and with tlie small elevated nearly circular leaf-scars 

 displaying a short row of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars; in Mexico frequently 



60-70 tall, with a trunk 6-8 in diameter, and spreading branches forming a 

 broad graceful head. Winter-buds terminal, acute, with dark brown puberulous 

 scales. Bark of the trunk dark gray tinged with red, I'-l^' thick, and divided by 

 shallow interrupted fissures into narrow ridges. Wood light, soft, close-grained, 

 light brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Banks of streams, western Texas; not common, and possibly intro- 

 duced; mountain forests of the state of Michoacan, southern Mexico; largely planted 

 in the streets and plazas of the cities of the Mexican table-land, and unsurpassed 

 by other Ash-trees in stateliness and beauty. 



11. Fraxinus Pennsylvanica, Marsh. Red Ash. 



Leaves 10'-12' long, with stout slightly grooved pubescent petioles, and 7-9 

 oblong-lanceolate or ovate leaflets gradually narrowed at the apex into long slender 

 points, unequally wedge-shaped at the base, and obscurely serrate, or often entire 

 below the middle, when they unfold coated below and on the petioles with hoary 

 tomentum, and lustrous and puberulous on the upper surface, and at maturity thin 

 and firm, 4' -6' long, I'-l^' wide, light yellow-green above and pale and covered below 

 and on the thick grooved petiolules with silky pubescence, with conspicuous midribs 

 and branching veins, in the autumn turning yellow or rusty brown before falling. 

 Flovrers dioecious, appearing late in the spring as the leaves begin to unfold, in rather 

 compact tomentose panicles, covered in the bud with ovate rusty-tomentose scales; 

 staminate flower with a minute obscurely toothed cup-shaped calyx, and 2 stamens, 

 with linear-oblong light green anthers tinged with purple and raised on short slender 

 filaments; calyx of the pistillate flower cup-shaped, deeply divided, as long as the 

 ovary, gradually narrowed into an elongated style divided at the apex into 2 green 

 stigmatic lobes. Fruit in open glabrous or pubescent panicles, l'-2' long, surrounded 

 at the base by the persistent calyx, linear or narrowly spatulate, with a slender terete 

 many-rayed body tapering gradually from the summit to the base and margined 

 above by the thin decurrent wing, Y-^' wide, narrowed, rounded, acute or apiculate 

 at the apex, and as long as or somewhat longer than the body. 



