772 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



basin, often covering the banks of streams flowing east from the Rocky Mountains, 

 and westward only in elevated canons; in tlie region east of the Mississippi River 



appearing distinct, but westward connected with the Red Ash by intermediate forms, 

 equally referable to either tree. 



Often planted as a shade and ornamental tree in the middle west, and occasionally 

 in the northeastern states, but less desirable than the White Ash. 



12. Fraxinus profunda, Bush. Pumpkin Ash. 



Leaves 9'-18' long, with stout tomentose petioles, and usually 7 but occasionally 

 9 lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate long-stalked leaflets acuminate or abruptly long- 

 pointed at the apex, rounded or broadly cuneateand usually unsymmetrical at the base, 

 when they unfold coated below, like the petiolules, with hoary tomentum, and pilose 

 on the upper surface, with short pale hairs, particularly along the midribs and veins, 

 and at maturity thick and firm in texture, dark yellow-green and nearly glabrous 

 above, soft-pubescent below, 5'-10' long and 2'-5' wide, with stout yellow midribs 

 deeply impressed and puberulous above and numerous slender primary veins arcuate 

 and connected near the undulate and entire or slightly serrate margins. Flo"wers 

 dioecious, in elongated much-branched pubescent panicles, with oblong or oblong- 

 obovate scarious bracts and bractlets; staminate flower with a minute campanulate 

 obscurely 4-toothed calyx and 2 or 3 stamens, with oblong apiculate anthers and 

 comparatively long slender filaments; pistillate flower with a large deeply lobed 

 calyx accrescent and persistent under the fruit, and an ovary gradually contracted 

 into a slender style divided into 2 dark spreading stigmatic lobes. Fruit in long 

 drooping many-fruited clusters, oblong, 2'-3' in length, the wing often ^' wide, some- 

 times falcate, rounded, apiculate, or emarginate at the apex, and decurrent to below 

 the middle or nearly to the base of the thick terete many-rayed body. 



A tree, occasionally 120 high, with a slender trunk 3 in diameter above the much 

 enlarged and buttressed base, small spreading branches forming a narrow rather open 

 head, and stout branchlets marked by large pale lenticels, coated at first with hoary 

 tomentum, tomentose and pubescent during their first winter and light gray and 

 pilose or glabrous the following year, and marked by the oblong slightly raised leaf- 

 scars rounded at the base, obconic, and nearly surrounding the lateral buds; usually 



