OLEACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. o7 
FRAXINUS OREGONA. 
Ash. 
LEAFLETS 5 to 7, oblong to oval, acute, the lateral sessile or rarely short-petiolulate, 
villous-pubescent while young. 
Fraxinus Oregona, Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 59, t. 99 (1849).— Fraxinus pubescens, var. B, Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 51 
Torrey, Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. 128. — Newberry, Pacific (1838). 
i. R. Rep. vi. 25, 87. — Cooper, Pacific KR. Rk. Rep. xii. Fraxinus latifolia, Bentham, Bot. Voy. Sulphur, 33 (not 
pt. ii. 68 ; Am. Nat. iv. 307. — Koch, Dendr. ii. 260. — Willdenow) (1844). 
Gray, Brewer & Watson Bot. Cal. i. 472; Syn. Fl. N. Fraxinus Oregona, £, Nuttall, Sylva, iii. 59 (1849). . 
Am. ii. pt. i. 76. — Lauche, Deutsche Dendr. ed. 2,164.— Fraxinus Oregona, var. riparia, Wenzig, Bot. Jahrb. iv. 
Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. 8S. ix. 187 (1883). 
111.— Wenzig, Bot. Jahrb. iv. 187. — Koehne, Deutsche Fraxinus Americana, subspec. Oregona, Wesmael, Bull. 
Dendr. 511. Soc. Bot. Belg. xxx. 110 (1892). 
A tree, frequently seventy or eighty feet in height, with a tall trunk occasionally four feet in diam- 
eter, and stout branches which form a narrow upright head or a broad shapely crown. The bark of the 
trunk varies from an inch to an inch and a half in thickness, and is dark gray or brown slightly tinged 
with red, and deeply divided by interrupted fissures into broad flat ridges which separate on the surface 
into thin papery scales. The branchlets are stout and terete, and when they first appear are glabrous 
or more or less thickly coated with pale or rarely rufous silky tomentum, which sometimes continues to 
cover them during their second year, and sometimes disappears during their first summer, when they 
become light red-brown or orange-color, glabrous or puberulous, often covered with a slight glaucous 
bloom, and marked with small remote pale lenticels, and during their first and second winters with the 
large elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars in which appear a short row of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle- 
scars. The leaf-buds are acute, an eighth to a quarter of an inch long, with four pairs of scales covered 
with pale hairs or with rusty pubescence; those of the inner rows when fully grown are elongated 
and often foliaceous. The leaves are five to fourteen inches long, with stout grooved and angled 
pubescent or glabrous petioles and five to seven leaflets; these are oblong or oval, usually contracted at 
the apex into short broad points, gradually narrowed at the base, and entire or remotely and obscurely 
serrate; when they unfold they are usually coated on the lower surface and on the petioles with thick 
pale tomentum, and are pubescent on the upper surface, or they are nearly glabrous or pilose with a 
few scattered hairs; at maturity they are thick and firm in texture, light green above, paler and tomen- 
tose, pubescent or puberulous below, three to seven inches long, and an inch to an inch and a half 
wide, with broad pale midribs impressed above, conspicuous veins arcuate near the margins, and reticu- 
late veinlets ; the terminal leaflet is raised on a slender petiolule often an inch in length, and the lateral 
leaflets are sessile or are borne on short stout grooved stalks. The leaves turn yellow or russet-brown 
in the autumn, and fall early. The flowers, which appear in April or May as the leaves begin to 
unfold, are produced, the males and females on separate individuals, in compact glabrous panicles 
covered in the bud with broadly ovate scales coated with rufous pubescence. The bracts are obovate, 
rounded, scarious, a third of an inch long, and early deciduous. The staminate flower consists of a 
minute calyx and of two stamens with short filaments and short oblong apiculate anthers. The calyx 
of the pistillate flower is laciniately cut and shorter than the ovary, which is narrowed into a stout style 
divided into two conspicuous stigmatic lobes. The fruit, which is produced in ample crowded clusters, 
is obovate, surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx, and an inch and a half to two inches long ; 
