OLEACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 4] 
FRAXINUS VELUTINA. 
Ash. 
LEAFLETS 3 to 9, lanceolate to oval, entire or serrate, the lateral short-petiolulate 
or subsessile. 
Fraxinus velutina, Torrey, Hmory’s Rep. 149 (1848). — (1873). — Rothrock, Wheeler’s Rep. vi. 185, t. 22.— 
Sudworth, Rep. Sec. Agric. 1892, 326. Coville, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. iv. 148 (Bot. Death 
Fraxinus pistacieefolia, Torrey, Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. Valley Exped.). 
128 (1856) ; Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 166. — Rusby, Bull. Fraxinus pistaciefolia, var. coriacea, Gray, Syn. Fl. 
Torrey Bot. Club, ix. 54. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. N. Am. ii. pt. i. 74 (1878). — Wenzig, Bot. Jahrb. iv. 
Cent. ii. 305. — Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. pt. i. 74. — 182. 
Watson, Proce Am. Acad. xviii. 113.— Sargent, Forest “Fraxinus Americana, var. pistacizefolia, Wenzig, Bot. 
Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 106. Jahrb. iv. 182 (1883). — Wesmael, Bull. Soc. Bot. Belg. 
Fraxinus coriacea, Watson, Am. Nat. vii. 302 (in part) xxx. 108. 
A tree, thirty to forty feet in height, with a trunk rarely exceeding eight inches in diameter, and 
stout often spreading branches which usually form a round-topped handsome head. The bark of the 
trunk, which varies from a third to a half of an inch in thickness, is gray slightly tinged with red, and 
deeply divided into broad flat broken ridges separating on the surface into small thin scales. The 
branchlets are slender and terete, and are coated, when they first appear, with pale pubescence or with 
thick white tomentum ; and in their first winter they are red-brown or ashy gray, glabrous or tomentose, 
often covered with a glaucous bloom, and marked with small pale lenticels and with semiorbicular 
slightly obcordate leaf-scars, in the middle of which appears a lunate row of fibro-vascular bundle-scars. 
The leaf-buds are acute, and an eighth of an inch long, with three pairs of broadly ovate pointed scales 
which are coated with thick rufous tomentum ; the inner scales lengthen on the young shoot, and when 
fully grown are half an inch long, strap-shaped, and rounded at the apex. The leaves are three to six 
inches long, with stout grooved petioles, and from three to nine stalked or sometimes nearly sessile 
leaflets; these are lanceolate or rarely obovate, occasionally falcate, long-pointed and acute or rounded 
at the apex, or sometimes nearly oval, wedge-shaped and often decurrent on the petiolule or unequally 
rounded at the base, and entire or remotely serrate above the middle with acute or recurved teeth ; 
when they unfold they are light green or reddish brown, and glabrous, pubescent, or tomentose, 
especially on the under surface; and at maturity they are thick and firm or sometimes coriaceous, dark 
yellow-green above, paler and often pubescent below, and occasionally furnished with tufts of long pale 
hairs along the under side of the broad midribs, three to five inches long, and a quarter of an inch to 
nearly an inch wide, with prominent veins arcuate near the margins and connected by conspicuous 
reticulate veinlets. The flowers, which appear late in May or early in June with the unfolding of the 
leaves, are produced in short compact panicles, the males and females on different individuals, from 
buds in the axils of leaves of the previous year covered by broadly ovate scales rounded at the apex and 
coated with rusty tomentum. The calyx is cup-shaped, light green, and larger and more deeply divided 
in the pistillate than in the staminate flower. The anthers are oblong, apiculate, and borne on short 
slender filaments. The ovary is gradually narrowed into a short style deeply divided into two stigmatic 
lobes. The fruit ripens in the summer or early autumn, and hangs in dense clusters four or five inches 
long ; it is spatulate-oblong, surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx, an inch long and an eighth 
of an inch to nearly a quarter of an inch wide, with a terminal wing which is acute, rounded, or 
emarginate at the apex, tipped with the remnants of the style, and about as long as the terete nearly 
clavate conspicuously rayed wingless body. 
