758 TREES OP NORTH AMERICA 



1. FRAXINUS, L. Ash. 



Trees or shrubs, with light tough wood, thick furrowed or rarely thin and scaly 

 bark, usually ash-colored branchlets with thick pith, and compressed obtuse terminal 

 buds much larger than the lateral buds. Leaves petiolate, unequally pinnate or 

 rarely reduced to a single leaflet, deciduous; leaflets conduplicate in the bud, usually 

 serrate, petiolulate or sessile. Flowers dioecious or polygamous, rarely perfect, pro- 

 duced in early spring on slender elongated pedicels without bractlets, in open or 

 compact slender-branched panicles, with obovate linear or lanceolate caducous 

 bracts, terminal on leafy shoots of the year, developed from the axils of new leaves, 

 or from separate bnds in the axils of leaves of the previous year, or at the base of 

 young branchlets and covered by 2 ovate scales; calyx campanulate, deciduous or 

 persistent under the fruit, or 0; corolla 2-4-parted, the divisions conduplicate in the 

 bud, united at the base, or 0; stamens usually 2, rarely 3 or 4, inserted on the base 

 of the corolla, or hypogynous; filaments terete, short or rarely elongated; anthers 

 ovate or linear-oblong, the cells opening by lateral slits; ovary 2 or rarely 3-celled, 

 contracted into a short or elongated style crowned with a 2-lobed stigma; ovules 

 suspended in pairs from the inner angle of the cell; raphe dorsal. Fruit a 1 or 

 rarely 2 or3-seeded winged samara; body terete or slightly flattened contrary to the 

 septum, with a dry or woody pericarp produced into an elongated terminal and more 

 or less decurrent wing, usually 1-celled by abortion or sometimes 2 or 3-celled and 

 winged. Seed solitary in each cell, oblong, compressed, gradually narrowed and 

 rounded at the ends, filling the cavity of the fruit; seed-coat chestnut-brown. 



Fraxinus with thirty to forty species is widely distributed in the temperate 

 regions of the northern hemisphere, and within the tropics occurs on the islands of 

 Cuba and Java. The North American species, with one exception, are arborescent. 



Fraxinus produces tough straight-grained valuable wood, and some of the species 

 are large and important timber-trees. The waxy exudations from the trunk and 

 leaves of Fraxinus Ornus, L., of southern Europe and Asia Minor furnish the manna 

 of commerce used in medicine as a gentle laxative; and the Chinese white wax is 

 obtained from the branches of species of eastern Asia. 



Fraxinus is the classical name of the Ash-tree. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT SPECIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



1. Flowers with petals, polygamous or perfect. 



Panicles terminal on lateral leafy branches of the year ; corolla 4-parted ; leaflets 3-7, 

 lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate. 1. F. cuspidata (E, H). 



Panicles axillary on branches of the year or of the previous year ; leaflets 3-7, narrowly 

 spatulate to oblong-obovate ; petioles wing-margined. 2. F. Greggii (E). 



2. Flowers without petals, dioecious, polygamous or rarely perfect ; panicles from separate 



buds in the axils of leaves of the previous year. 



*Body of the fruit compressed, its wing broad and extending to the base of the body. 

 Branchlets 4-sided ; flowers perfect ; leaflets 5-9, ovate-oblong to lanceolate, minute, 

 coarsely serrate, rounded or wedge-shaped at the base. 



3. F. quadrangulata (A, C). 

 Branchlets terete. 



Leaflets 3-11 ; flowers diacious ; fruit narrowed and acnte at the base. 

 Leaflets acute or acuminate, 3-7. 



Fruit elliptical to spatulate, often 3-wingod, acute at the apex ; leaflets 



5-7, ovate-oblong. 4. F. Caroliniana (C). 



Fruit lanceolate to ohlanceolate, rounded and emarginate at the apex ; 



leaflets 3-5, oblong. 5. F. Floridana (C). 



