38 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. OLEACEZ. 
ultimately elongated panicles four or five inches long when fully grown, and covered in the bud by 
broadly ovate dark brown or nearly black scales rounded at the apex. The lower bracts are ovate, 
boat-shaped, rounded on the back, acute at the apex, and covered with scurfy rufous or dark brown 
pubescence; the upper bracts are linear-lanceolate, more or less laciniately cut on the margins, some- 
times fan-shaped and divided into five narrow segments, and covered with rufous hairs. The staminate 
flowers are borne on separate individuals or are found mixed with perfect flowers on trees which mostly 
produce pistillate flowers. The staminate flower consists of two large deeply pitted oblong dark purple 
anthers attached on the back to short broad filaments; the pistillate flower of an ovary gradually 
narrowed into a long slender style deeply divided at the apex into two broad purple stigmas, and often 
accompanied by one or by two perfect, or globose rudimentary pink anthers, which are sessile or borne 
on long or short filaments. The fruit, which is borne in open panicles eight or ten inches in length, is 
lanceolate-oblong or linear-oblong, and an inch or an inch and a half long, with a broad thin wing 
which surrounds the short flat faintly nerved body, and is conspicuously emarginate at the apex. 
Fraxinus nigra inhabits deep cold swamps and the low banks of streams and lakes, and is dis- 
tributed from southern Newfoundland and the northern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Lake 
Winnipeg, and southward through the northern states to Newcastle County, Delaware, the mountains of 
Virginia, southern Illinois, central Missouri, and northwestern Arkansas. 
The wood of Fraxinus nigra is heavy, rather soft, not strong, tough, coarse-grained, durable in 
contact with the soil, and easily separable into thin layers; it contains numerous thin medullary rays 
and bands of large open ducts marking the layers of annual growth, and is dark brown, with thin light 
brown or often nearly white sapwood. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6318, a 
eubic foot weighing 39.37 pounds. It is largely used in the interior finish of houses and cabinet- 
making, and for fences, barrel-hoops, and in the manufacture of baskets. According to Lamarck’ the 
Black Ash was cultivated in the King’s Garden at Paris in 1786. Transplanted from its native 
swamps it is a short-lived tree,” and in cultivation one of the least beautiful and satisfactory of the Ash- 
trees of the Atlantic states. 
1 Dict. ii. 549. rich moist soil, which usually produces rapid growth. The trunk 
The Frazinus ex Nova Anglia, pinnis foliorum in mucronem pro- 
ductioribus of Miller (Dict. No. 5. — Duhamel, Traité des Arbres, i. 
248) may have been this species. 
2 The increase in the diameter of the trunk of the Black Ash 
is sometimes remarkably slow in the case of a tree growing in 
specimen in the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the 
American Museum of Natural History in New York is twenty-two 
inches in diameter inside the bark, and displays two hundred and 
thirty-four layers of annual growth, the period of slowest growth 
being between its tenth and one hundred and seventieth years. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES. 
PLATE CCLXIV. 
. A flowering branch of the staminate tree, natural size. 
Po mR oe 
FRAXINUS NIGRA. 
A flowering branch of the pistillate tree, natural size. 
A staminate flower, enlarged. 
An anther, rear and front views, enlarged. 
. A pistillate flower with rudimentary stamens, enlarged. 
. Vertical section of an ovary, enlarged. 
PiateE CCLXV. FRAXINUS NIGRA. 
A seed, natural size. 
An embryo, enlarged. 
. A leaf, natural size. 
om rR WY 
. A fruiting branch, natural size. 
. Vertical section of a fruit, natural size. 
. A winter branchlet, natural size. 
