OLEACE^ 



765 



broad filaments; pistillate flower consisting of a long slender style deeply divided at 

 the apex into 2 broad purple stigmas and often accompanied by 1 or 2 perfect or glo- 

 bose rudimentary pink anthers sessile or borne on long or short filaments. Fruit 

 in open panicles 8'-10' in length, lanceolate-oblong to linear-oblong, I'-Itf long, with 

 a thin wing about |' wide, surrounding the short flat faintly nerved body, and con- 

 spicuously emarginate at the apex. 



A tree, occasionally 80-90 high, with a tall trunk rarely exceeding 20' in diame- 

 ter, slender mostly upright branches forming a narrow head, and stout terete branch- 

 lets dark green and slightly puberulous when they first appear, soon becoming ashy 

 gray or orange color and marked by large pale lenticels, growing darker during 

 their first winter and then roughened by the large suborbicular leaf-scars displaying 

 a semicircular row of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars; usually much smaller. 



Winter-buds terminal, broadly ovate, acute, rather less than \' long, with 3 pairs 

 of scales, those of the outer pair thick and rounded on the back at the base, gradu- 

 ally narrowed and acute at the apex, dark brown or almost black, slightly puberulous, 

 falling as the bud begins to enlarge in the spring, and shorter than the scales of the 

 inner rows coated on the outer surface with rufous pubescence, those of the second 

 pair becoming strap-shaped, 1' long, ^-' wide, and about one half as long as the pinnate 

 usually foliaceous inner scales. Bark of the trunk gray slightly tinged with red, 

 i^'-^' thick, and divided into large irregular plates separating into thin papery scales. 

 Wood heavy, rather soft, not strong, tough, coarse-grained, durable, easily sepa- 

 rable into thin layers, dark brown, with thin light brown often nearlv white sapwood; 

 largely used for the interior finish of houses and cabinet-making, and for fences, 

 barrel hoops, and in the manufacture of baskets. 



Distribution. Deep cold swamps and the low banks of streams and lakes; south- 

 ern Newfoundland and the northern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Lake 

 Winnipeg, and southward to New Castle County, Delaware, the mountains of Vir- 

 ginia, southern Illinois, central Missouri, and northwestern Arkansas. 



7. Fraxinus anomala, Wats. 



Leaves mostly reduced to a ingle leaflet but occasionally 2 or 3-foliolate, the 

 leaflets broadly ovate or sometimes orbicular, rounded or acute or rarely obcordate 



