Fraxinus 899 



Flowers (section Fraxinaster) polygamous, without calyx or corolla, arising in 

 the axils of the leaf-scars of the preceding year's shoot. Fruit, linear-oblong, with a 

 short flattened faintly nerved body, surrounded by a thin wing very emarginate 

 at the apex. 



This is the American representative ' of the common European ash, and it is 

 easily distinguished from nearly all the other species by the dense ring of rufous 

 pubescence on the leaf-rachis at the nodes. Fraxinus mandshurica, which has the 

 rachis similarly bearded, but more deeply grooved, differs in having leaflets with a 

 sharp serrate margin and a tapering base, (A. H.) 



Fraxinus nigra is found, according to Sargent, in deep, cold swamps and on the 

 low banks of streams and lakes, from southern Newfoundland and the north shores 

 of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Lake Winnipeg, and southward to the mountains of 

 Virginia, southern Illinois, and north-west Arkansas. Macoun says that in Canada 

 it is more widely distributed than the white ash, and more abundant than the latter 

 throughout its range, from Anticosti to eastern Manitoba, in swamps and river 

 bottoms. It grows on peat mosses, but remains small in such situations. I saw it 

 in the woods about Ottawa, but of no great size, and Sargent gives 80 to 90 feet 

 as its extreme height. Ridgway found it abundant in Knox County, Indiana, 

 where a tree 83 feet high, of which the bole was 57 feet, only measured \\ foot 

 in diameter at 5 feet from the ground. He says that it presents so very close a 

 resemblance to the young Pecan tree {Carya olivcsfortms) as not to be readily 

 distinguished except by experts.^ In Carya, however, the leaves are alternate. Its 

 wood, according to Emerson, is remarkable for toughness, and on this account 

 was preferred to every other by the Indians for making baskets, and is still used for 

 that purpose in preference to every kind of wood except that of a young white oak. 



We have seen no specimens of this tree except small plants^ at Kew and 

 Colesborne, although it was probably planted in many places early in the nineteenth 

 century ; having been introduced, according to Loudon, in 1 800. Like many other 

 trees of the Atlantic side of North America, it is short-lived and does not thrive in 

 our climate. Prof Sargent informs me in a letter that at the Arnold Arboretum, 

 near Boston, it is one of the most difficult of all trees to grow. At Angers in 

 France, it does badly on its own roots, but succeeds when well grafted ; a specimen 

 there having attained 15 feet high in eight years. (H. J. E.) 



1 According to Cobbett, Woodlands, Art. 136 (1825), the seeds of this species, like the English ash, do not come up 

 until the second year. 



2 Mr. G. B. Sudworth, however, tells me that the bark of the two is so distinct that they can readily be distinguished. 

 He adds that other species of ash, hickory, oak, Liquidambar, and Nyssa, are now used for basket-making. 



* These plants were raised from seed sent from Michigan in 1895, and are not thriving, having been repeatedly injured 

 by frost. They are now only 2 feet high. 



