44, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. OLEACEE. 
and do not entirely inclose the scales of the third pair, which lengthen with the young shoot, and at 
maturity are oblong-obovate, narrowed and rounded at the apex, keeled, half an inch long, and coated 
with rusty pubescence; the scales of the inner row are also accrescent, and when fully grown are two 
thirds of an inch long, ovate, pointed, keeled, sometimes slightly pinnatifid, green, tinged with brown 
toward the apex, covered with pellucid spots, and very lustrous. The leaves are eight to twelve inches 
long, with stout grooved petioles and five to nine stalked leaflets; these are ovate to oblong-lanceolate, 
generally falcate, long-pointed, unequally wedge-shaped or often rounded at the base, and entire or 
remotely and obscurely crenulate-serrate ; when they unfold they are thin and glabrous, or sometimes 
pubescent on the lower surface, and at maturity they are thick and firm, or subcoriaceous, dark green 
and often lustrous above, pale, frequently silvery white, and glabrous or pubescent below, three to five 
inches long and an inch and a half to three inches wide, with broad pale midribs compressed above, and 
many conspicuous veins arcuate near the margins. The leaves appear late in the spring, and fall early 
in the autumn after turning on some individuals deep purple and on others clear bright yellow. The 
flowers open before the leaves, and are produced, the males and females on separate plants, in compact 
or ultimately elongated glabrous panicles from buds covered with dark ovate scales rounded at the apex 
and slightly keeled on the back. The lower bracts are oblong-ovate, narrowed at the apex, light green 
and rather longer than those at the base of the lateral flowers of the ultimate divisions of the inflo- 
rescence, which are linear, one third of an inch in length, and caducous. The calyx is campanulate, 
slightly four-lobed in the sterile flower, and deeply lobed or laciniately cut in the pistillate flower. 
The stamens, of which three occasionally appear in one flower, are composed of short stout filaments 
and of large oblong-ovate apiculate anthers which, when the buds first open, are nearly black, later 
becoming reddish purple, and finally appearing yellow by the discharge of the abundant pollen. 
The ovary of the pistillate flower is contracted into a long slender style, divided into two spreading 
dark purple stigmatic lobes, which usually mature and wither before the anthers of trees in the 
neighborhood shed their pollen. The fruit, which varies from an inch to nearly two inches in length, 
or sometimes, on trees in the Gulf states, is less than half an inch long,’ is produced in crowded clusters 
six or eight inches long, and hangs on the leafless branches until midwinter ; it is lanceolate or oblong, 
and surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx, with a short terete oblong marginless conspicuously 
many-rayed body much shorter than the thin terminal wing which is pointed or emarginate at the apex. 
Fraxinus Americana, which is one of the most valuable timber-trees of eastern North America, is 
distributed from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and southern Ontario” to northern Minnesota ; it ranges 
south to northern Florida, central Alabama and Mississippi, and west in the United States to eastern 
Nebraska * and Kansas, the Indian Territory, and to the valley of the Trinity River in Texas. In much 
of this great region it is a common inhabitant of the forest, growing in rich rather moist soil on 
low hills or often in the neighborhood of streams, and attaining its greatest size on the fertile bottom- 
lands of the basin of the lower Ohio River. In the south, and west of the Mississippi River, the White 
Ash is less common and of smaller size, and produces less valuable wood, than in the northeastern and 
central states. 
The wood of Fraxinus Americana is heavy, hard, strong, coarse-grained, and tough, although 
ultimately brittle; it contains numerous obscure medullary rays and rows of large open ducts clearly 
marking the layers of annual growth, and in slowly grown specimens often occupying nearly the entire 
width of the annual rings. It is brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood. The specific gravity of the 
absolutely dry wood is 0.6543, a cubic foot weighing 40.77 pounds. It is used in immense quantities 
1 The small-fruited variety, first noticed in northern Florida, was Fraxzinus Curtissii, Vasey, Cat. Forest Trees U. S. 20 (1876). 
described by Gray as : — The fruit of all the American Ash-trees, however, varies in size, 
Fraxinus Americana, var. microcarpa, Syn. Fl. N. Am. ii. pt.i.75 and it is not uncommon to find the largest and smallest fruits of 
(1878). —Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. Frazxinus Americana mixed together on a single branch. 
108. — Mohr, Garden and Forest, v. 508. 2 Brunet, Cat. Vég. Lig. Can. 41. — Macoun, Cat. Can. Pl. i. 316. 
Fraxinus albicans, Buckley, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1862, 4 (in part). 8 Bessey, Bull. Exper. Stat. Nebraska, iv. art. iv. 21. 
