110 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



spray but slightly pending. A tree seldom over eighty to 

 one hundred feet high, two to three feet in diameter ; foliage, 

 though large, flexile, loose, light, and soft; as suggested, the 

 top rounded with shorter, lower branches; the fruit greatly 

 resembles the Eastern White Ash; bark not so white, but 

 clayey-gray, rough, and the water-lines elliptically spread or 

 superficially gaping; large branches much smoother, lesser 

 branches and twigs smoothish, save the sparse scabrosities, 

 white dotted. The pseudo-compound oddly pinnate leaf of 

 five to seven leaflets, at length from soft hairy, they become 

 more or less rough (scabrulose) throughout: opposite, the leaf- 

 leted divisions almost stem less, except the terminal odd one, 

 set on a winged leaf-stem about one half an inch long, broad 

 pear-form or obegg-form, obtuse, or often abruptly a little 

 sharpish, the base broadly wedge-shape, margin entire, or 

 with rarely a few scolloped shallow teeth, nearly smooth 

 above, and finally scratchy-rough, especially on the margin, 

 and beneath, as well as sparsely along the common leaf-stalk. 

 The leaf usually consists of two pairs of leaflets, and an odd 

 one, leaflets jointed at their union with the common long 

 foot-stalk, the buds rounded ; flowers in opposite fascicles near 

 the ends of twigs from axils of last year's growth. The fruit 

 cylindroid, like a grain of rye, from a minute four-toothed 

 calyx (cup), marginless at base, but gradually margined 

 upwards into a spatulate flattened wing or key, often slightly 

 notched at the end ; whole length one to one and a half inches 

 long, less than one fourth broad, rarely three-winged. 



The foliage is among the last to appear late in the Spring, 

 when the Signal Ash becomes the advance guard and guide 

 to the florist, that he may now trust his tender plants abroad 

 in the open air, for Jack Frost's Spring departure is thereby 

 announced. He is also first to ground his Autumn uniform, 

 to warn him to return them to their Fall and Winter shelter, 

 for Jack's sinister approach is again suddenly sensed on some 

 balmy Autumn day, when floods of yellow light pour their 

 ripening rays over his worn mantle; "presto, change!" and 

 instantly, all brown and sere, as it were, scorched in the bat- 

 tle fires, they fall away. Thus the " Martial Ash " promptly 

 responds to the great roll-call, and retires from active duty 

 for a season on his parol of honor. That much of this har- 

 mony and concord everywhere abound in spirit and nature's 

 laws all mankind are prepared to expect and to heed. The 

 leaf of the oak, when of the size of squirrel's ears, is the 

 Indian's calendar for the best corn-planting time, budding 

 of birch for barley, far north, etc., each relative to their own 

 clime; birds of passage have their calendar of exit and 

 return ; insects theirs, as the food of plants and flowers come 

 and go: the fish of streams, lakes, and the great and wide 

 sea, and whatsoever passes through the paths of the deep, 



