310 



OLEAOEAE. 



FRAXINUS. Ash. 

 (Family Oleaceae). 



Trees: deciduous. Twigs rather 

 stout, stiff and divergent, often 

 squarish or compressed at the 

 nodes: pith often 6-sided or lemon- 

 shaped. Buds sessile, superposed 

 with the lower somewhat 'covered 

 by a narrow articular membrane, 

 with 2 or 3 pairs of opposite 

 scales, those of the end-bud often 

 lobed. Leaf-scars opposite, half- 

 round to subelliptical or broadly 

 U-shaped, low: bundle-traces in 

 an elliptical or C-shaped aggre- 

 gate: stipule-scars lacking. 



In a comparative study of re- 

 serve food materials in buds and 

 surrounding parts published in 

 volume 2 of the Memoirs of the 

 Torrey Botanical Club, Halsted 

 gives the ash as one example illus- 

 trating the accumulation of re- 

 serve starch in winter near the terminal bud. Schaar, in vol- 

 ume 99 of the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy, in- 

 cludes Fraxinus among genera which store food in their bud 

 scales; and Goebel explains the color of the scales as due to 

 the dried cell-contents of their scurf. 



One species, .F. Ornus, is spoken of sometimes as the 

 manna ash because when wounded it exudes a sugary sub- 

 stance called by this name. A tree "boxed", somewhat as a 

 pine is for turpentine, is pictured *n Baillon's Dictionnaire 

 de Botanique, vol. 2, p. 643. 



Winter-character references to Fraxinus: F. americana. 

 Blakeslee & Jarvis, 343, 556, pi.; Brendel, pi. 1; Denniston, 



