BLUE ASH. 
63 
I observed fruit of this curious species many years ago, 
in winter, in the oak forests of South Carolina, and as I 
thought, the leaves of the same ; but I am now in doubt 
whether the leaves then collected actually belonged to the 
same plant with the fruit. I must therefore leave the spe- 
cies in the same imperfect manner I then found it, as I have 
never since seen any other specimen. 
The fruit is the most curious of any in the genus, at first 
sight almost similar to that of an Halesia, being nearly of 
the same breadth ; the samara, in fact, appeared to be 
more rarely 2 than 3 winged, the seed itself was also 3- 
sided, at the base the fruit is attenuated into a very slender 
peduncle without being at all terete. Perhaps it is merely 
a variety of F. platycarpa. 
Plate C. 
The fruit which is 3-winged. 
Blue Ash. ( Fraxinus quadrangulata .) Mr. T. Lea of 
Cincinnati, informs me that he measured a tree of this spe- 
cies which was cut down in his neighbourhood, which was 
104 feet high, 32 inches in diameter, and its age by the 
concentric circles was 232 years. The diameter under the 
bark was 30 inches. Another growing near to it was 
about 36 inches in diameter, and proportionably high ; 
they were both healthy trees and had not attained their 
greatest size. 
Besides the valuable uses of the Ash as timber, for which 
it has been employed from the highest antiquity, it was 
formerly used as a medicine, and thought to be equal to 
the wood of the Guiacum, by Bauhin, who also remarks, 
that the inner bark of the common species (F. excelsior ), 
steeped in water communicates to it a blue colour in the 
same manner as our Blue Ash, (F. quadrangulata ), yet it 
