294 Oleacca—Fraxinus. 
2. F. rotundifolia. Manna Ash.—Very near the foregoing, 
but having less conspicuous flowers and more rounded sessile 
leaflets. South of Europe. 
3. F. excélsior. Common Ash.—This handsome native 
tree differs from the above in having apetalous flowers with 
purplish black stamens. The smooth ash-grey bark, pinnate 
leaves and black buds distinguish it from all our other native 
trees. The Weeping Ash is a variety of this, and was first 
discovered in Cambridgeshire about a century since. There 
is also a gold-barked variety both erect and pendulous, and 
there are gold and silver striped and blotched varieties. 
The form called monophglla, or helerophglla, is singular in 
having most of the leaves reduced to a single leaflet, which is 
nearly entire or finely cut, as in the ‘variety called lecenita. 
The variety crispa is more curious than beautiful, having very 
dark green curled foliage. 
F, lentiscifilia.—A smaller tree with long slender branches 
and distant leaves composed of few long narrow remote leaflets. 
A native of the Levant, of which there isa weeping form. J. 
longictispis is a recently introduced Japanese tree with two or 
three pairs of lanceolate very acuminate leaflets. 
The North American species are numerous, but offer no 
novelty or variety, and are only grown in collections or on a 
small scale for their timber, for which purpose, however, they 
have not proved superior to the common one. 
There are many fine old trees of the common form scattered 
over Envland, some nearly a hundred feet high, notably one at 
Woburn and another at Cury. 
5, SYRINGA. 
Deciduous shrubs bearing simple entire leaves and large 
terminal clusters of usually sweet-smelling flowers. Corolla 
salver-shaped. Fruit a flattened 2-celled capsule, when ripe 
splitting iuto two boat-shaped pieces, each containing one or 
two wineed seeds. Only about half a dozen species are known 
to exist in a wild state, and these are found in South-eastern 
Europe, Persia, Northern India and China. The name is said 
to be an altered form of the Persian Syrinv, which is applied 
to the common one. 
1. S. vulgaris. Common Lilac.—This, with the Laburnum, 
forms the chief attraction of our shrubberies in Spring, and we 
should as soon expect to see a garden without a Lilac as with- 
