Small's Ash 



805 



late flowers are bome on different trees (dioecious), the pistillate with a deeply 4- 

 toothed calyx. The samaras are spatulate to oblong-spatulate, 3 to 5 cm. long, 

 4 to 7 mm. wide, the blunt, sharp-pointed, 

 or sometimes notched wing about twice as 

 long as the narrow, little flattened seed- 

 bearing part and decurrent on its edges to 

 the middle or below. 



The tree is well adapted to street and 

 park planting, and grows rapidly. Its 

 wood has a specific gravity of 0.71, is 

 brown and strong and is much used in car- 

 pentry and in wagon-building. 



It has been supposed that the so-called 

 Red ash and Green ash could be told apart 

 by the velvety twigs of the former and the 

 smooth ones of the latter, but there is all 

 variety in the amount of hairyness on the 

 twigs, as in some other species, and the 

 leaves and fruits are alike in the two. fio. ^j^. _ ^^ Ash. 



14. SMALL'S ASH — Fraxinus Smallii Britton, new species 



Small's Ash occurs along rivers from Georgia and Florida to Louisiana and 

 Missouri, and has been confused with the Red ash, which it somewhat resembles 



in foUage, and with the White ash, on 

 account of the plump seed-body of 

 its fruit; but the wing of the samara 

 is clearly decurrent on the sides of the 

 seed-body, which is not the case in 

 the White ash. The tree becomes at 

 least 16 meters high, and then has a 

 trunk diameter of about 6 dm. 



The young twigs are round, gray 

 and smooth in the specimens seen. 

 The leaves have either 5 or 7 oblong- 

 lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate or 

 ovate-oblong, stalked leaflets, which 

 are rather thick, pointed, narrowed 

 or rounded at the base, darker green 

 above than beneath, entire-margined 

 Fig. 735. - SmaU's Ash. ^j. ^^^ jj^^^^ toothed, 8 to 1 5 cm. long, 



and more or less hairy on the under side at least along the veins. The samaras 

 are narrowly oblong-spatulate, 3 to 5 cm. long, s to 8 mm. wide, the seed-body 



