NOTES ON NEW AND OLD GENERA 1 85 



of a "genus" which has species with constant characters to be 

 looked for in these three major categories of distinctions? And 

 yet modern botanists, persist and have persisted and perhaps 

 may for a long time to come continue to persist without apparently 

 the slightest misgivings, to consider plants of such varied, im. 

 portant and withal constant characters to constitute logically ^ 

 genus ! 



The family Oleaceae is scarcely less of an anomaly than, 

 Fraxinus as a "genus." It contains plants with flowers complete 

 to various forms of declinism, fruits, capsule, berry, drupe or 

 samara! Now, the American plants of this family having drupes 

 or berries, have long been recognized and separated, among other 

 characters principally by the presence or absence of petals or the 

 union thereof in the genera Forrestiera (apetalous) Chionanthus 

 (Choripetalous), Ligustrum (sympetalous). Why should it then 

 be considered illogical or bold to suggest the segregation of the 

 aggregate group, Fraxinus Linn, into segregates on the same 

 principles of classification (and that in the same family at that) 

 is be3^ond our comprehension. Granted that the characters 

 hold constant it is difficult to com-prehend why the fleshy fruited 

 members of the same family are separable when the dry fruited 

 (samara) members are not. The genus Fraxinus Linn, was in fact 

 not nearly as anomalous and illogical as the modern one because 

 he had only three species in it, but since his time botanists have 

 put into it many different types, and mostly for no other reason 

 than that the newly discovered plants had winged fruits, like the 

 Linnaean species. The attempts at segregation on the part of 

 earlier botnaists not a few, attracted no serious attention on the 

 part of modern bookmakers. 



The following segregations, mostly made at one time or another 

 by older botanists and even pre-Linnaean, may here be suggested. 

 The type species of the Linnaean aggregate is Fraxinus excelsior 

 Linn. This plant is polygamo-dioicous and has achlamydeous 

 flowers. As these notes are suggested principally in the interest 

 of the Eastern American plants not much attention will be paid 

 to others and foreign plants usually crowded into the Linnaean 

 genus Fraxinus. 



Fraxinus (Vergil) Linn. Sp. PI. p. 1057, (1753), Gen. PI. 

 P- 477. (1754) in part. 



