OLEACER, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 53 
FRAXINUS BERLANDIERIANA. 
Ash. 
LEAFLETS 3 to 5, oblong-lanceolate, acute or rounded at the apex, entire or coarsely 
serrate. 
Fraxinus Berlandieriana, De Candolle, Prodr. viii. 278 Fraxinus trialata, Buckley, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1862, 5. 
(1844). Fraxinus pubescens, var. Berlandieriana, Wenzig, Bot. 
Fraxinus viridis, var. Berlandieriana, Torrey, Bot. Mex. Jahrb. iv. 183 (1883). 
Bound. Surv. 166 (1859).— Gray, Syn. Fl. N. Am.ii. Fraxinus pubescens, var. Lindheimeri, Wenzig, Bot. 
pt. i. 75.— Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. ii. 305. — Jahrb. iv. 184 (1883). 
Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. xviii. 113.—Sargent, Forest Fraxinus Americana, var. Berlandieriana, Wesmael, 
Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 109. — Coulter, Bull. Soc. Bot. Belg. xxx. 108 (1892). 
Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 259 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). 
A tree, rarely attaining within the territory of the United States a greater height than thirty feet 
or producing a trunk more than a foot in diameter ; but in Mexico, especially in cultivation, sometimes 
sixty or seventy-five feet tall, with a trunk six or eight feet in diameter, and spreading branches which 
form a broad graceful head. The bark of the trunk is dark gray tinged with red, an inch to an inch 
and a half thick, and divided by shallow interrupted fissures into narrow ridges. The branchlets are 
terete and slender, and when they first appear are light green, becoming in their first winter light 
brown tinged with red, or ashy gray, and marked with occasional lenticels and with the small elevated 
nearly circular leaf-scars, which display a short row of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars. The buds are 
acute, with dark brown puberulous scales. The leaves are three to seven inches long, with slender 
elongated petioles and three to five glabrous leaflets; these are ovate or rarely obovate, pointed or 
rounded at the apex, gradually narrowed at the base into long petiolules, sharply and coarsely serrate 
above the middle with acute teeth, or sometimes almost entire, thick and coriaceous, dark green and 
lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower, an inch and a half to four inches long, and half an 
inch to an inch and a half wide, with prominent midribs, and primary veins connected by conspicuous 
reticulated veinlets. The male and female flowers are produced on different individuals in short 
glabrous panicles inclosed in the bud by broadly ovate rounded chestnut-brown pubescent scales. The 
bracts are obovate or lanceolate, about half an inch long, covered with rusty pubescence, and caducous. 
The staminate flower consists of a minute obscurely lobed calyx and two linear-oblong apiculate anthers 
borne on short filaments. The calyx of the female flower is cup-shaped, deeply divided, and as long as 
the ovary, which is gradually narrowed into a slender style two-lobed and stigmatic at the apex. The 
fruit, which is often three-winged, is ovate or spatulate, surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx, 
and an inch to an inch and a half long, with a short clavate body more or less margined by the thin 
wing, which is ovate or obovate and usually narrowed toward the acute or rounded apex. 
Fraxinus Berlandieriana grows naturally in the mountain forests of the state of Michoacan in 
southern Mexico, where it is probably widely distributed ;' through the agency of man it has become 
common near streams in northeastern Mexico, and is occasionally found on the banks of the Nueces, 
the Rio Blanco, and other rivers of western Texas, where possibly it has been introduced since the 
settlement of the country by the Spaniards. 
The wood of a small tree grown in western Texas is light, soft, close-grained, with many obscure 
medullary rays, small scattered open ducts and bands of larger ducts marking the layers of annual 
1 Garden and Forest, vii. 14. 
