OLEACE^E 763 



elliptical, obovate, or spatulate, frequently 3-winged, surrounded at the base by the 

 persistent calyx, If '-2' long, often marked on the 2 faces by a conspicuous impressed 

 inidvein, the body short, compressed, and surrounded by the broad thin many- 

 nerved wing '-' wide, acute and rounded or emarginate at the apex, and usually 

 narrowed below into a stalk-like base. 



A tree, rarely more than 40 high, with a trunk sometimes 12' in diameter, 

 small branches forming a narrow often round-topped head, and slender terete 

 branchlets light green and glabrous or coated with rufous deciduous tomentum 

 when they first appear, light brown tinged with red and sometimes covered with a 

 glaucous bloom in their first winter, light gray or yellow, occasionally marked by 

 large pale lenticels, and by the elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a short 

 row of conspicuous fibre-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds terminal, ' long, 

 with 3 pairs of ovate acute chestnut-brown puberulous scales, those of the outer rank 



thickened at the base, rounded on the back, and shorter than the others. Bark of the 

 trunk fa'fa' thick, light gray, more or less marked by large irregularly shaped round 

 patches, and separating on the surface into small thin closely appressed scales. Wood 

 light, soft, weak, close-grained, nearly white sometimes tinged with yellow, with 

 thick lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Deep river swamps inundated during several months of every 

 year, and usually under the shade of larger trees; coast region of the Atlantic and 

 Gulf states, southern Virginia to Cape Canaveral and the Caloosa River, Florida, 

 and the valley of the Sabine River, Texas, and northward through western Louisi- 

 ana to southwestern Arkansas; also in Cuba. 



5. Praxinus Floridana, Sarg. Water Ash. 



Leaves 5'-$ long, with elongated stout terete petioles, and usually 3-5 oblong 

 acuminate long-stalked leaflets gradually narrowed and cuneate at the base, and re- 

 motely serrate, with small incurved teeth, when they unfold scurfy-pubescent above 

 and hoary-tomentose below, and at maturity thick and firm, dark green and glabrous 

 or puberulous on the upper and more or less tomentose on the lower surface, 3'-^' 

 long and I'-l^' wide, with slender midribs and thin primary veins arcuate and united 

 within the thickened revolute margins. Flowers dioecious, appearing late in Febru- 



