OLEACEA, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 39 
FRAXINUS ANOMALA. 
Ash. 
FLowers polygamous. Leaves mostly reduced to a single leaflet, or rarely 2 or 
3-foliolate. 
Fraxinus anomala, Watson, King’s Rep. v. 283 (1871). — mael, Bull. Soc. Bot. Belg. xxx. 114. — Koehne, Deutsche 
Parry, Am. Nat. ix. 203. — Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. Dendr. 511, £. 90, D. — Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. 
pt. 1. 74. —Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census Herb. iv. 148 (Bot. Death Valley Exped.). 
U. S. ix. 106.— Wenzig, Bot. Jahrb. iv. 186. — Wes- 
A tree, eighteen to twenty feet in height, with a short trunk six or seven inches in diameter and 
stout contorted branches which form a round-topped head ; or often a low shrub with numerous spreading 
stems. The bark of the trunk, which is dark brown slightly tinged with red and a quarter of an inch 
thick, is divided by shallow fissures into narrow ridges, and separates into small thin appressed scales. 
The branches, when they first appear, are quadrangular, dark green tinged with red, and covered with 
pale pubescence ; in their first winter they are orange-color, puberulous, and marked with elevated pale 
lenticels and narrow lunate leaf-scars, and in their second or third year become ashy gray and terete. 
The leaf-buds are broadly ovate, acuminate or obtuse, and covered with thick orange-colored tomentum. 
The leaves are reduced to a single leaflet, or are occasionally two or three-foliolate ; the leaflets are 
broadly ovate or sometimes rotund, rounded or acute or rarely obcordate at the apex, wedge-shaped 
or cordate at the base, and entire or sparingly crenately serrate above the middle; when they unfold 
they are covered with short pale hairs on the upper surface, and are pubescent on the lower; and at 
maturity they are thin and rather coriaceous, dark green above, paler below, an inch and a half to two 
inches long, and an inch to nearly two inches broad, or, when more than one, much smaller; they have 
broad rather conspicuous midribs and many obscure veins, and when solitary are borne on stout grooved 
petioles often an inch and a half in length, or, when the leaves are composed of several leaflets, these 
are short-petiolulate. The flowers appear when the leaves are about two thirds grown, in short compact 
pubescent panicles produced from the axils of leaves of the previous year. The bracts of the inflo- 
rescence are strap-shaped or lanceolate, acute, half an inch long, and coated with thick brown tomentum. 
The flowers are sometimes perfect and sometimes unisexual by the abortion of the stamens, the two 
forms occurring in the same panicle. The calyx is cup-shaped and minutely four-toothed. The 
anthers are linear-oblong, orange-color, and raised on slender filaments which are nearly as long as the 
stout columnar style divided at the apex into two stigmatic lobes. The fruit is oblong or obovate- 
oblong 
oD? 
emarginate at the apex, surrounding the long flattened striately nerved body. 
and two thirds of an inch long, the broad wing, which is rounded and sometimes slightly 
Frazinus anomata is distributed from the valley of the McElmo River in southwestern Colorado, 
through southern Utah, where it is not rare in the neighborhood of streams on elevated sandstone 
mesas, and occurs on the western slopes of the Charleston Mountains in southern Nevada. 
The wood of Fraxinus anomala is heavy, hard, and close-grained ; it contams many large open 
scattered ducts and numerous thin medullary rays, the layers of annual growth being marked by several 
rows of small ducts. It is light brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood composed of thirty or forty 
layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6597, a cubic foot 
weighing 41.11 pounds. 
Fraxinus anomala was discovered in 1859 by Professor J. S. Newberry’ in the Labyrinth Cafion 
1 John Strong Newberry (1822-1892), a native of Warren, Con- paleontology in the School of Mines at Columbia College, was edu- 
necticut, and at the time of his death professor of geology and cated in the Western Reserve College in Ohio, from which he was 
