OLEACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 31 
FRAXINUS DIPETALA. 
Fringe-flowered Ash. 
PaNnicLeEs clustered, often on short lateral branches, in the axils of leaves of the 
previous year. Flowers mostly perfect, corolla 2-parted to the base. Leaflets 3 to 9, 
oval or oblong, obtuse or acute, coarsely serrate above the middle. 
Fraxinus dipetala, Hooker & Arnott, Bot. Voy. Beechey, 
362, t. 87 (1840). — Gray, Brewer & Watson Bot. Cal. 
i. 472; Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. pt. i. 73. — Hemsley, Bot. 
Biol. Am. Cent. ii. 305. — Wenzig, Bot. Jahrb. iv. 173. — 
Wesmael, Bull. Soc. Bot. Belg. xxx. 79. — Koehne, 
Deutsche Dendr. 509. — Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. 
Herb. iv. 148 (Bot. Death Valley Haped.). 
Ornus dipetala, Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 66, t. 101 (1849). 
Chionanthus fraxinifolia, Kellogg, Proc. Cal. Acad. v. 
18 (1873). 
A shrub, with many spreading stems ten or twelve feet tall ; or possibly under favorable conditions 
a small tree. The branchlets are stout and terete or more or less four-angled ; when they first appear 
they are dark green and marked with pale lenticels, and in their second year become rather bright red- 
brown or gray tinged with red. The leaves are two to six inches long, with stout petioles and three to 
nine leaflets; these are oval or oblong, rounded or acute at the apex, wedge-shaped at the base, and 
coarsely serrate above the middle with slightly incurved teeth; they are puberulous when they unfold 
and at maturity are thick and firm, dark green on the upper surface, rather paler on the lower, half an 
inch to two inches long, a quarter of an inch to three quarters of an inch wide, and long-petiolulate or 
sometimes nearly sessile. ‘The flowers are borne on slender puberulous pedicels which vary from a 
quarter to half an inch in length and are produced in narrow panicles two or three inches long, clustered 
in the axils of leaves of the previous year, and often on short lateral spur-like branches naked or 
furnished with one or two leaves. The calyx is puberulous on the outer surface, cup-shaped, a sixteenth 
The corolla is a third of an 
inch long, thin, creamy white, and divided into two broadly ovate petals rounded at the apex, abruptly 
of an inch long, and slightly four-toothed, or occasionally almost entire. 
narrowed. at the base into slender claws, and as long as the stamens, which are composed of slender 
filaments and elongated linear anthers. 
slightly lobed at the apex. 
rounded and apiculate or often emarginate at the apex and about as long as the flat sharp-edged body 
The ovary is ovate and gradually contracted into a style 
The fruit is linear-oblong or spatulate-oblong, with a broad terminal wing 
several-nerved on both surfaces.’ 
Fraxinus dipetala is a common shrub in the coast region and on the western foothills of the 
Sierra Nevada of California, growing near the banks of streams on dry rocky slopes and ranging 
southward into Lower California.’ 
Fraxinus dipetala appears to have been discovered by David Douglas,’ who visited California in 
1830, although it was not described until several years after his death.* 
1 The following forms have been distinguished : — 
Var. brachyptera, with short obovate fruit one half to three 
quarters of an inch long, with a wing only half as long as the 
body (Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. pt. i. 74 (1878).— Wenzig, Bot. 
Jahrb. iv. 174). 
Var. trifoliata, with leaves composed of one to three small coria- 
ceous obscurely serrate leaflets and small fruit (Torrey, Bot. Mez. 
Bound. Surv. 167 (1859). — Gray, 1. c. — Wenzig, l. c.). 
2 T.S. Brandegee, Proc. Cal. Acad. ser. 2, ii. 182 (Pl. Baja 
Cal.). 
8 See ii. 94. 
4 T have not examined the bark or wood of this plant, which is 
a shrub rather than a tree. But as it is the only American species 
which is not known to be arborescent in habit, it is admitted into 
The Silva to complete the account of the American Ashes. 
