OLEACE^E 



767 



**Body of the fruit nearly terete. 



8. Fraxinus Americana, L. White Ash. 



Leaves 8'-12' long, with stout grooved petioles, and 5 ovate to obloiig-lanceolate 

 generally falcate long-pointed leaflets wedge-shaped or often rounded at the base 

 and entire or remotely and obscurely crenulate-serrate, when they unfold thin and 

 glabrous or sometimes pubescent beneath, and at "maturity thick and firm or sub- 

 coriaceous, dark green and often lustrous above, pale or frequently silvery white 

 and glabrous or pubescent below, 3'-5' long and l^'-3' wide, with broad pale midribs 

 and numerous conspicuous veins arcuate near the margins, falling early in the autumn 

 after turning on some individuals deep purple and on others clear bright yellow. 

 Flowers dioecious, opening before the leaves late in the spring, in compact ultimately 

 elongated glabrous panicles from buds covered with dark ovate scales rounded at the 

 apex and slightly keeled on the back; calyx campanulate, slightly 4-lobed in the 

 staminate flower, and deeply lobed or laciniately cut in the pistillate flower; stamens 

 2 or occasionally 3, with short stout filaments and large oblong-ovate apiculate an- 

 thers at first nearly black, later becoming reddish purple; ovary contracted into a 

 long slender style divided into 2 spreading dark purple stigmatic lobes. Fruit l'-2' 

 in length, or at the south sometimes not more than ^' long (var. microcarpa, Gray), in 

 crowded clusters 6'-8' in length, lanceolate or oblong, surrounded at the base by the 



persistent calyx, with a terminal wing usually about \' wide, pointed or emarginate 

 at the apex, and much longer than the short terete oblong marginless conspicuously 

 many-rayed body. 



A tree, sometimes 120 high, with a tall massive trunk 5-6 in diameter, stout 

 upright or spreading branches forming in the forest a narrow crown, or with suffi- 

 cient space a round-topped or pyramidal head, and thick terete branchlets dark green 

 or brown tinged with red and covered with scattered pale hairs when they first 

 appear, soon becoming light orange color or ashy gray and marked by pale lenticels, 

 becoming in their first winter gray or light brown, lustrous, often covered with a 

 glaucous bloom and roughened by the large pale semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying 

 near the margins a line of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds 

 terminal, broadly ovate, obtuse, with 4 pairs of scales, those of the outer pair ovate, 



