RUE FAMILY 
Corolla.—Petals four or five, white, downy, spreading, hypogy 
nous, imbricate in the bud. 
Stamens.—Five, alternate with the petals, hypogynous, the pistil- 
late flowers with rudimentary anthers ; filaments awl-shaped, more 
or less hairy; anthers ovate or cordate, two-celled, cells opening 
longitudinally. 
Pisttls.—Ovary superior, hairy, abortive in the staminate flowers, 
two to three-celled ; style short ; stigma two to three-lobed ; ovules 
two in each cell. 
Fruit,—Samara, orbicular, surrounded by a broad, many-veined 
reticulate membranous ring, two-seeded. Ripens in October and 
hangs in clusters until midwinter. 
The Wafer Ash is a tree in miniature; no matter if only 
six feet high, it will assume the arborescent habit and _ pro- 
duce a broad, rounded, spreading head, as much as to say 
“T can bea tree if lam small.” Long ago, like the Papaw, 
it acknowledged itself vanquished in the struggle for light 
and elected to grow in the shade. Its northern limit is the 
north shore of Lake Ontario, its southern the mountains of 
Mexico, and in all that vast region it forms no inconsiderable 
part of the undergrowth of the forest. 2 
Losing on many sides in the struggle for existence it has 
certainly gained on one, for it has developed one of the best 
adaptations for disseminating seed found in the vegetable 
world, <A seed like that of the Magnolia has little chance 
of getting far from home, unless it can borrow wings by 
making itself attractive to birds, or legs by being sought by 
animals. And if all the seeds of a tree should germinate 
under the parent shade there would be little chance for any 
seedling. Hence a tree has made a long step forward in 
the struggle for existence when it is able to equip its seeds 
with wings of their own which will bear them by the aid of 
a favoring breeze away from the parent tree. 
It is just this that the Wafer Ash has accomplished. Its 
fruit is a two-seeded samara, that is, a closed wooden box in 
which are safely stored two seeds. If that were all, al- 
though the cover might be tight and the seeds secure from 
harm, they could never get very far from home. At this 
point the life-saving appliance comes in. Upon each of the 
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