OLEACE. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 33 
FRAXINUS GREGGII. 
Ash. 
PANICLES axillary on branches of the year or of the previous year. Leaflets 3 to 
7, narrowly spatulate to oblong-obovate, obtuse ; petioles wing-margined. 
Fraxinus Greggii, Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. xii. 63 (1876) ; 
Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. pt. i. 74. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. 
Cent. ii. 305. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Cen- 
sus U.S. ix. 106; Garden and Forest, ii. 447, f. 128. — 
Havard, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. viii. 510. — Pringle, Gar- 
den and Forest, iv. 338, 362. — Coulter, Contrib. U. S. 
Nat. Herb. ii. 259 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). — Wesmael, 
Bull. Soc. Bot. Belg. xxx. 106. 
Fraxinus Schiedeana, var. parvifolia, Torrey, Bot. Mez. 
Bound. Surv. 168 (1859). 
A tree, rarely twenty to twenty-five feet in height, with a trunk eight or ten feet long and 
occasionally eight inches in diameter; or more often a shrub sending up from a single crown many 
slender erect stems four to twelve feet in length. The bark of the trunk is thin, gray, or light brown 
tinged with red, and separates on the surface in large papery scales. The branchlets are slender and 
terete, and are dark green and puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming ashy gray; they are 
roughened with many minute pale elevated lenticels, and in their second or third years gradually turn 
dark gray or brown. The winter-buds are about an eighth of an inch long, and obtuse, with thick ovate 
light brown pubescent scales rounded on the back. The leaves are an inch and a half to three inches 
long, with winged petioles and three to seven leaflets; these are narrowly spatulate or oblong-obovate, 
and entire or occasionally coarsely serrate above the middle with remote blunt teeth, slender midribs, and 
obscure reticulate veins; they are thick and coriaceous, dark green on the upper surface, rather paler 
and covered with small black spots on the lower surface, half an inch to an inch long, an eighth to 
a quarter of an inch wide, and nearly sessile. The flowers are unknown. The fruit is oblong-linear or 
obovate, and a half to two thirds of an inch long; the thin wing is decurrent on the short terete body, 
and is rounded and emarginate at the apex, which is tipped with the elongated persistent conspicuous 
style.’ 
Fraxinus Greggii is scattered along the valley of the Rio Grande in western Texas from the 
mouth of the San Pedro to that of the Pecos River, and ranges southward on the mountains of Nuevo 
Leon, Cohahuila, and Chihuahua. 
common and to attain its greatest size on the Sierra Nevada of Nuevo Leon, where it occasionally 
It grows on dry limestone cliffs and ledges, and appears to be most 
appears as a small tree. 
The wood of Fraxinus G'reggii is heavy, hard, and close-grained, with obscurely marked layers of 
annual growth and numerous thin medullary rays, and is brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood. 
The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.7904, a cubic foot weighing 49.26 pounds. 
Fraxinus Greggii was discovered in 1847 in Nuevo Leon by Josiah Gregg,” the author of The 
Commerce of the Prairies, whose services to botany are commemorated in the specific name. 
1 On a specimen collected by Mr. C. G. Pringle (No. 3253, 1890) 
in the state of Cohahuila on September 19, 1890, the wings of the 
ripe fruit are rounded and sometimes apiculate at the apex, and 
show no trace of the styles, which are very conspicuous on the full 
grown fruit which I gathered on the mountains near Monterey in 
Nuevo Leon in April, 1887. 
2 Little is known of the early life of Josiah Gregg. Broken 
health first made him a traveler on the prairies, which he after- 
wards crossed several times as a trader under the patronage of 
Mr. Thomas G. Rockhill, a Philadelphia merchant. In 1841 and 
1842 he contributed a series of letters on the history and condition 
of the Santa Fé trade to the Galveston Advertiser and the Arkansas 
Intelligencer ; and in 1844 appeared The Commerce of the Prairies, 
a journal of a Santa Fé trader during eight journeys across the 
great western prairies and a residence of nearly nine years in 
northern Mexico. In preparing his notes for this publication he 
was assisted by Mr. John Bigelow, who testifies to the purity, 
modesty, and general elevation of Gregg’s character, and to his 
conscientiousness, which made it impossible for him to state any- 
thing which he did not know personally, or to make an overstate- 
