Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. V NO. II 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. JULY 3. 1919 
Ash-trees. Several readers of these Bulletins have asked that some¬ 
thing be said in them about Ash-trees. Fraxinus is the name of the 
genus to which all Ash-trees belong, although it may be well to say 
that the trees called Mountain Ashes are not Ashes but belong to the 
genus Sorbus, a member of the Rose Family and closely related to the 
Pears, Apples and Chokeberries. Ash-trees occur in nearly every tem¬ 
perate part of the Northern Hemisphere, but are more abundant in 
species in eastern North America than in other parts of the world. 
Ash-trees fall naturally into two groups; those of the first group are 
furnished with narrow white petals (Ornus) and the flowers of those 
in the second group are destitute of petals. The best known tree 
of the first group is the little tree called Manna Ash or Flowering 
Ash {Fraxinus Ornus) a native of southeastern Europe which has 
long been an inhabitant of the gardens of western Europe. It grows 
well in the middle Atlantic States, but has never been a success in 
the Arboretum where a tree which had flowered in 1917 was killed to 
the ground by the extreme cold of the following winter. Three of the 
flowering Ashes are natives of the United States, Fraxinus cuspidata 
and F. Greggii of the Mexican boundary region and F. dipetala of 
the mountain valleys of California. These three plants are not in the 
Arboretum collection where they would not be hardy, but Ornus is well 
represented here by two eastern Asiatic species, Fraxinus Bungeana, 
a small shrub from northern China which was first raised here in 1882, 
and by the Japanese Fraxinus longicuspis which grows in the Arbor¬ 
etum both as a shrub with several spreading stems and as a small 
tree. Of the Ash-trees without petals and therefore with inconspicuous 
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