OLEACE^E 



841 



8. Fraxinus americana L. White Ash. 



Leaves 8 '-12' long, with a stout grooved petiole, and 5-9, usually 7, ovate to oblanceo- 

 late or oval, often falcate abruptly pointed or acuminate leaflets, cuneate or rounded at 

 base, crenulate-serrate or nearly entire, thin but firm, dark green above, pale or light green 

 and glabrous or slightly pubescent below, or rarely thicker, lanceolate, long-acuminate, 

 entire, glabrous and silvery white below (var. crassifolia Sarg.), 3'-5' long and H'-3' wide, 

 with a broad midrib, and numerous conspicuous veins arcuate near the margins; falling 

 early in the autumn after turning on some individuals deep purple and on others clear 

 bright yellow; petiolules \'-\' or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1' in length. Flowers 

 dioecious, opening before the leaves late in the spring, in compact ultimately elongated 

 glabrous panicles from buds covered with dark ovate scales rounded at apex and slightly 

 keeled on the back; calyx campanulate, slightly 4-lobed in the staminate flower, and deeply 

 lobed or laciniately cut in the pistillate flower; stamens 2 or occasionally 3, with short stout 

 filaments, and large oblong-ovate apiculate anthers at first nearly black, later becoming 



Fig. 745 



reddish purple; ovary contracted into a long slender style divided into 2 spreading dark 

 purple stigmatic lobes. Fruit rarely deeply tinged with purple (f. iodocarpa Fern.), l'-2|' 

 long and usually about \' wide, or sometimes not more than \' long (var. microcarpa A. 

 Gray), in crowded clusters 6'-8' in length, lanceolate or oblanceolate, surrounded at base 

 by the persistent calyx, the^wing pointed or emarginate at apex and terminal or slightly 

 decurrent on the terete body. 



A tree, sometimes 120 high, with a tall massive trunk 5-6 in diameter, stout upright 

 or spreading branches forming in the forest a narrow crown, or with sufficient space a 

 round-topped or pyramidal head, and thick terete branchlets dark green or brown tinged 

 with red and covered with scattered pale caducous hairs when they first appear, soon be- 

 coming light orange color or ashy gray and marked by pale lenticels, becoming in their first 

 winter gray or light brown, lustrous, often covered with a glaucous bloom and roughened 

 by the large pale semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying near the margins a line of conspicuous 

 fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds: terminal broad-ovoid, obtuse, with 4 pairs of 

 scales, those of the outer pair ovate, acute, apiculate, conspicuously keeled on the back, 

 nearly black, slightly puberulous, about one half the length of the scales of the second pair 

 rather shorter than those of the third pair, lengthening with the young shoots, and at ma- 

 turity oblong-ovate, narrowed and rounded at apex, keeled, \' long, and rusty-pubescent, 

 the scales of the inner pair becoming f ' long, ovate, pointed, keeled, sometimes slightly 



