FRAXINUS GENUS, VEL ORNUS EUROPiEA.— MANNA, OR FLOWERING ASH. 
Class XXIII. POLYGAMIA.— Order II. DICECIA. 
Natural Order, OLE ACE M. THE OLIVE TRIBE. 
Fig. (a) A flower separate, to shew its four discrete petals and two stamens. Fig. (6) The samaroid fruit. 
This tree, which greatly resembles our common ash, is a native of the warmest parts of Europe. It grows 
abundantly in Calabria, Sicily, and on the highest and most rocky mountains of Greece, and is one of the 
most elegant trees that adorn our lawns and pleasure-grounds; flowering in May and June. 
The Ornus Europcea is a low tree, very much branched, and covered with a smooth grey bark. The 
leaves, which are smaller than those of the common ash, stand upon longish, channelled footstalks ; are 
opposite, pinnate, and composed of several pairs of leaflets, with a terminal one ; the leaflets are opposite, 
about an inch and a half long, and three-fourths broad, of an oblong shape, pointed at each end, unequally 
serrated, smooth, and of a bright green colour. The flowers are produced in loose panicles at the extre- 
mities of the branches, flowerstalks are suprade-compound, and scarcely the length of the leaves. The seg- 
ments of the calyx are ovate ; the corolla consists of four oblong, linear, pointed petals ; the filaments are 
two, spreading, and supporting large yellow incumbent anthers ; the germen is oval, with a very short 
style, and a notched stigma. The capsules are pendulous and compressed, and usually contain a single 
lanceolate cylindrical dark brown seed. 
Manna is yielded by trees of different families, for although we are principally indebted to four species 
of ash, F. ornus ; F. rotundifolia ; F. excelsior ; and F. parviflora ; the larch, fir, orange, walnut, willow, 
mulberry, and the oak, also produce it. At Briangon, in France, manna is said to be collected from all 
sorts of shrubs; and the inhabitants observe that such summers as produce it in the greatest quantities, are 
very fatal to the plants. Their walnut-trees produce annually a considerable quantity ; but if they happen 
to yield more than ordinary, they usually perish the following winter. From this it appears evident that 
manna is the extravasated juice of trees, and that they cannot afford to lose it ; and what confirms this 
idea, is their secreting so much more when the summers are hot. The ancients were accustomed to find it 
on different species of trees ; and therefore inferred that it was something wholly foreign to the tree : an 
error very easily embraced by those who were not aware that the nutritive juices of trees are nearly, if not 
wholly, the same. 
"The Manna tree, (Ornus Europcea , vel Fraxinus Ornus, )” says Prof. Cirillo,* "is common not only 
in Calabria and Sicily, but also on the famous mountain Garganus, situated near the old town of Sypontum, 
upon the Adriatic; and is mentioned even by Horace as an inhabitant of that mountain : — 
Aut aquilonibus 
Querceta Gargani laborant, 
Et foliis viduantur Orni. 
" In all the woods near Naples the manna tree is to be found very often ; but for want of cultivation 
it never produces any manna, and is rather a shrub than a tree. The method by which the manna is 
obtained from the Ornus, though very simple, has been yet very much misunderstood by all those who 
have travelled in the kingdom of Naples ; and among other things they seem to agree that the best and 
purest manna is obtained from the leaves of the tree ; but this, I believe, is an opinion taken from the 
ancients, and received as an incontestable observation, without consulting nature. I never saw such a kind, 
and all those who are employed in the gathering of the manna know of none that comes from the leaves. 
The manna is generally of two kinds ; not on account of the intrinsic quality of them being different, but 
only because they are got in a different manner. In order to obtain the manna, those who have the man- 
agement of the woods of the Orni, in the months of July and August, when the weather is very dry and 
warm, make an oblong incision, and take a piece off from the bark of the tree about three inches in length, 
and two in breadth: they leave the wound open, and by degrees the manna runs out, and is almost sud- 
denly thickened to its proper consistence, and is found adhering to the bark of the trees. This manna, 
* Phil. Trans, vol. 63, p. 234. 
