TREES GROWING IN RICH SOIL. 223 



and the first woman out of an alder. She was called 

 Embla. 



The white ash is an especially handsome tree of rapid 

 growth and with clean foliage that is not ravaged by insects. 

 Its flexible, fine timber is of great value in cabinet work and is 

 well adapted for the making of oars, carriage poles, shafts and 

 agricultural implements. 



BLUE ASH. {Plate CXX.) 



Frdxz'nus quadranguldta. 



FAMILY SHAPE HEIGHT RANGE TIME OF BLOOM 



Olive. Slender. 60-100 feet. Ontario to Minnesota and March, April. 



southward to Alabama. 



Bark: light grey; tinged with red and divided irregularly into plate-like 

 scales. Branchlets : squared ; four-angled. Leaves : compound ; opposite ; 

 odd-pinnate ; with from five to nine or more long ovate or lanceolate leaflets 

 with very short petiolules, or nearly sessile. Apex and base taper- 

 pointed; sharply serrate ; yellowish green ; dull and glabrous above, pale and 

 glabrous below, but downy in the angles of the ribs when young. Flowers I 

 dioecious ; insignificant ; growing on slender pedicels from separate buds in 

 the axils of the leaf-scars of the preceding year, and unfolding as the terminal 

 bud expands. Samaras : hanging in clusters ; narrowly oblong ; the wings ex- 

 tending all around and nearly the same width throughout ; notched at the apex. 



In rich woods and on the fertile bottom lands of the west the 

 blue ash is mostly found. But even throughout its natural 

 range it is not a common tree. As is true of nearly all the 

 members of its family, it is beautiful and unusually free from 

 objectionable features. It grows rapidly to a tall and stately 

 height, and its foliage has happily no blandishments for the in- 

 sect world. In the autumn it turns to a pale yellow, and al- 

 though the leaves have unfolded late in the spring, just when 

 the samaras are forming, they are among the first to fall. The 

 mark by which the tree is most readily known is the quadran- 

 gular shape of its stems. It has, however, been popularly 

 stated that they lose this feature as they grow old. But Mr. 

 Beadle, of Biltmore, who has grown several hundred thousands 

 of blue ashes, finds that from the first to the tenth year of their 

 age there is a strong increase in this characteristic, and that 

 to some extent it is always retained. 



