OLEACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 47 
FRAXINUS TEXENSIS. 
Mountain Ash. 
LEAFLETS usually 5, ovate to broadly oval, rounded or slightly acute at the apex, 
pale on the lower surface. 
Fraxinus Texensis. Fraxinus Americana, var. Texensis, Gray, Syn. Fl. N. 
Fraxinus albicans, Buckley, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1862, 4 Am. ii. pt. i. 75 (1878). — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 
(in part). 10th Census U. 8. ix. 108.— Wenzig, Bot. Jahrb. iv. 
Fraxinus coriacea, Watson, Am. Nat. vii. 302 (in part) 182. — Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 259 (Man. 
(1873). Pl. W. Texas). — Reverchon, Garden and Forest, vi. 
524. 
A tree, rarely fifty feet in height, with a short trunk occasionally two or three feet in diameter, 
and thick spreading often contorted branches; or usually much smaller. The bark of the trunk is half 
to three quarters of an inch in thickness, dark gray, and deeply divided by narrow fissures into broad 
scaly ridges. The branchlets are stout and terete, and when they first appear are dark green, often 
tinged with red, and slightly puberulous; during the summer they become light yellow-brown, or light 
orange-color, and during their first winter they are light brown marked with remote oblong pale 
lenticels and with large elevated lunate leaf-scars which display a row of conspicuous fibro-vascular 
bundle-scars ; in the second or third year they grow dark gray or reddish brown. The leaf-buds are 
ovate and acute, with three pairs of scales; the scales of the outer row are broadly ovate, rounded at 
the apex, dark orange-color, and pilose toward the base; those of the second row are accrescent, ovate, 
rounded, coated with rufous tomentum, nearly half an inch long when fully grown, and about half the 
length of those of the inner rank, which are linear-strap-shaped, truncate or emarginate at the apex, and 
orange-color. The leaves are five to eight inches long, with elongated slender terete petioles and five 
or occasionally seven usually long-stalked leaflets; these are ovate, broadly oval, or obovate, rounded 
or acute at the apex, wedge-shaped, rounded or sometimes slightly cordate at the base, and coarsely 
crenulate-serrate mostly above the middle; when they unfold they are light green slightly tinged with 
red, and pilose with occasional pale caducous hairs; and at maturity they are thick and firm, dark green 
on the upper surface, pale and sometimes silvery white on the lower surface, two inches to two inches 
and a half long and an inch to two inches wide, with broad midribs deeply impressed above and often 
furnished below with tufts of short white hairs in the axils of the numerous conspicuous veins which 
fork near the margins and are connected by coarse reticulate veinlets. The male and female flowers, 
which are borne on separate individuals, appear early in March as the leaves begin to unfold, and are 
produced in compact glabrous panicles developed from the axils of leaves of the previous year and 
covered in the bud by ovate rounded orange-colored scales. The bracts are narrowly obovate, rounded 
or acute at the apex, scarious and early deciduous. The staminate flower is composed of a minute or 
nearly obsolete slightly four-lobed calyx and of two stamens with short filaments and linear-oblong light 
purple apiculate anthers. In the female flower the calyx is oblong, cup-shaped, and divided to the base 
into four acute lobes; the ovary is gradually narrowed into a long slender style terminating in two 
large stigmatic lobes. The fruit, which hangs in short compact clusters, ripens in May; it is spatulate 
or oblong, surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx, and half an inch to nearly an inch in length, 
with a short terete marginless many-rayed body about one third as long as the terminal wing, which is 
usually rounded or sometimes emarginate at the apex. 
Fraxinus Texensis, which grows on high dry limestone bluffs and ridges, is distributed through 
