FKAXINUS OEEGONA OREGON ASH. 41 



is the fruit in this oil that a single old Olive tree in the Levant is 

 recorded as having produced in a single season 240 quarts of oil. 



A gum-resin, exuding from the old trunks has an odor like vanilla 

 and is used in Italy as perfumery. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. Olive oil is much used in medicines, 

 mainly as a constituent of liniments, ointments, cerates and plasters, 

 and as a vehicle or diluent of more active substances. It is occasion- 

 ally given as a feeble purgative in cases of irritable intestines, and is 

 also useful when taken in larger quantities to involve acrid and poison- 

 ous substances and mitigate their action. Externally applied, it is 

 useful in relaxing the skin and in sheathing irritated surfaces from 

 the air.* 



GENUS FRAXINUS, TOURNEFORT. 



Leaves petioled, oddly-pinnate, with 3-15 toothed or entire leaflets. Floivers 

 small, racemed or panicled, from the axils of the last year's leaves, the American 

 representatives dioecious and apetalous; calyx and corolla, when present, as 

 described for the order; anthers large, linear or oblong; style single, stigma 

 2-cleft. Fruit a 1-2-celled, flattened samara, winged at the apex, 1-2 pendulous 

 seeds in each cell. 



(The ancient Latin name of the Ash; supposed to be from the Greek <j>pdis, a 

 separation, alluding to the facility with which the wood splits.) 



187. FRAXINUS OREGONA, NUTT. 

 OREGON ASH. 



Ger., Oregon/woke Esche ; Fr., Frvne d' ] Oregon ; Sp., Fresno de 



Oregon. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS : Leaves more or less tomentose (sometimes becoming 

 glabrous when old) 5-14 in. long, with 5-7 oval to oblong sessile or subsessile leaf- 

 lets (the terminal petiolulate), acute, entire or nearly so, 3-7 in. long, gradually 

 narrowing at base, light green above, paler beneath. Flowers appear in April or 

 May, as the leaves unfold, dioecious, in compact glabrous panicles, the scarious 

 rounded bracts early deciduous ; calyx of the staminate flower minute, that of 

 the pistillate flower lacineate ; stamens two with short filaments and oblong 

 apiculate anthers ; style stout and conspicuously 2-lobed. Fruit 1-2 in. long, 

 clavate, marginless at base, gradually margined above and preduced into a wing 

 rounded and variously emarginate or apiculate at apex. 



A fine tree, sometimes 80 ft. (2-t in.) in height, with symmetrical 

 top of stout brandies and columnar trunk 3 or 4 ft. (1 m.) in 

 diameter. The bark of trunk is of a dark grayish-brown color, 

 fissured into broad ridges and exfoliating in thin scales. 



HABITAT. The Oregon Ash is found throughout western Wash- 

 ington, Oregon and the coast region of California as far south as the 

 vicinity of San Francisco, and along the western bases of the Sierra 



*(U.S. Dispensatory, 17th edition, p. 956.) 



