852 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



and '-' wide, the wing rounded and often emarginate or acute at apex, surrounding the 

 flat body faintly many-rayed on both surfaces. 



A tree, usually 60-70 or occasionally 120 high, with a trunk 2-3 in diameter, small 

 spreading branches forming a slender head, and stout 4-angled branchlets more or less 

 4-winged between the nodes, dark orange color and covered with short rufous pubescence 

 when they first appear, becoming gray tinged with red in their second year and marked by 

 scattered pale lenticels and by the large elevated obcordate leaf-scars displaying a lunate 

 row of fibro- vascular bundle-scars, and in their third year light brown or ashy gray and then 

 gradually becoming terete. Winter-buds: terminal about long, with 3 pairs of scales, 

 those of the outer row thick, rounded on the back, usually obscurely pinnate toward the 

 apex, dark reddish brown, slightly puberulous or often hoary-tomentose, partly covering 

 the bud, those of the inner rows strap-shaped, coated with light brown tomentum, often 

 pinnate, becoming l'-l|' long. Bark of the trunk \'-\' thick, irregularly divided into large 

 plate-like scales, the light gray surface slightly tinged with red separating into thin minute 

 scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, rather brittle, light yellow streaked with brown, 

 with thick lighter colored sap wood of 80-90 layers of annual growth; largely used for floor- 

 ing and in carriage-building, and not often distinguished commercially from that of other 

 species of the northern and middle states. A blue dye is obtained by macerating the inner 

 bark in water. 



Distribution. Rich limestone hills, occasionally descending into the bottom-lands of 

 fertile valleys; southwestern Ontario through southern Michigan to southwestern Iowa and 

 southward through western Ohio and southeastern Indiana to eastern and central Ken- 

 tucky (near Clarksville, Montgomery County), eastern Tennessee and northern Ala- 

 bama (near Huntsville, Madison County), and through Missouri to southeastern Kansas, 

 southwestern Arkansas and northeastern Oklahoma (near Pawhuska, Osage County); 

 nowhere very abundant; of its largest size in the basin of the lower Wabash River, Illinois, 

 and on the western slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains, Tennessee. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern United 

 States. 



17. Fraxinus nigra Marsh. Black Ash. Brown Ash. 



Leaves 12'-16' long, with a stout pale petiole, and 7-11 oblong or oblong-lanceolate long- 

 pointed leaflets, unequally cuneate or sometimes rounded at base, serrate with small in- 

 curved apiculate teeth, the lateral sessile, the terminal on a petiolule up to 1' in length, cov- 

 ered especially below when they unfold with rufous hairs, and at maturity thin and firm, 



Fig 756 



