OLEACE^E 851 



second winters by the large elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a short row of con- 

 spicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars, rarely always glabrous (var. glabra Rehd.). Win- 

 ter-buds: terminal acute, f'-i' long, with 4 pairs of scales covered with pale hairs or with 

 i u ity pubescence, those of the inner rows often f oliaceous at maturity. Bark of the trunk 

 l'-l|' thick, dark gray, or brown slightly tinged with red, and deeply divided by inter- 

 rupted fissures into broad flat ridges separating on the surface into thin scales. Wood 

 light, hard, brittle, coarse-grained, brown, with thick lighter colored sap wood; largely used 

 in the manufacture of furniture, for the frames of carriages and wagons, in cooperage, the 

 interior finish of houses, and for fuel. 



Distribution. Usually in rich moist soil in the neighborhood of streams; coast region of 

 southern British Columbia, southward through western Washington and Oregon and the 

 California coast region to the Bay of San Francisco and the Santa Cruz Mountains, and 

 along the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada to those of the mountains of San Bernar- 

 dino and San Diego Counties, California; the var. glabra in Los Angeles and San Bernardino 

 Counties, and east of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County (Ash Creek, near Owens Lake), 

 and occasionally northward in California; most abundant and of its largest size on the bot- 

 tom-lands of the rivers of southwestern Oregon; one of the most valuable of the deciduous- 

 leaved timber-trees of Pacific North America. 



Occasionally cultivated; hardy in the Arnold Arboretum. 



16. Fraxinus quadrangulata Michx. Blue Ash. 



Leaves 8'-12' long, with a slender petiole glabrous, or puberulous toward the base, and 

 5-11 oblong-ovate to lanceolate long-pointed coarsely serrate leaflets unequally rounded or 

 cuneate at base, and coated when they unfold on the lower surface with thick brown to- 



Fig. 755 



mentum, and at maturity thick and firm, yellow r -green and glabrous above, pale and gla- 

 brous or sometimes furnished with tufts of pale hairs along the base of the conspicuous mid- 

 rib below, 3'-5' long and l'-2' wide, with short stout petiolules and 8-12 pairs of veins arcu- 

 ate near the margins; turning pale yellow in the autumn before falling. Flowers perfect, 

 appearing as the terminal buds begin to expand, in loose-branched panicles from small ob- 

 tuse buds with scales keeled on the back, apiculate at apex, and covered with thick brown 

 tomentum; calyx reduced to an obscure ring; corolla 0; stamens 2, with nearly sessile broad 

 connectives and dark purple oblong obtuse anther-cells; ovary oblong-ovoid, gradually nar- 

 rowed into a short style divided at apex into 2 light purple stigmatic lobes generally matur- 

 ing and withering before the anthers open. Fruit oblong to oblong-cuneate, l'-2' long 



