42 
flowers there are seventeen species with a number of more or less dis¬ 
tinct varieties which are natives of the United States. Six of these 
trees grow in the northeastern part of the country and three of them 
are common New England trees. To these trees color names have for 
no very obvious reason been given, at least in books, for it is doubtful 
if these names have any general application among persons whose 
knowledge of trees has come from an intimacy of association with 
them in the forest or by the roadside, and not from the study of other 
persons* ideas about them recorded in printed pages. To persons who 
know trees from books White Ash, Black Ash, Green Ash, Red Ash 
and Blue Ash are familiar names. The most valuable of the American 
Ashes as a timber tree and one of the handsomest of the whole genus, 
the so-called White Ash, Fraxinus americana, grows naturally from 
Nova Scotia to Florida and eastern Texas, and westward to Nebraska 
and Oklahoma. It is a splendid tree often, when conditions of soil and 
rainfall favor it more than one hundred feet high with a tall massive 
trunk five or six feet in diameter. If anyone in northeastern North 
America wants an Ash-tree for shade or to produce timber, Fraxinus 
americana is the tree to plant. It grows, too, better in western 
Europe than most eastern American trees, although it will probably 
not become as good a tree there as the native Ash. A variety of 
Fraxinus americana (var. subcoriacea) differs from the common form 
in its thicker, entire or only slightly toothed leaflets which are silvery 
white on their lower surface. This tree was raised at the Arboretum 
in 1874 from seeds collected at Mt. Victory in central Ohio. It is there¬ 
fore now one of the oldest trees raised here. This Ohio tree has 
grown more rapidly and is handsomer than any other Ash-tree which 
has been planted in the Arboretum. Seeds of this tree usually repro¬ 
duce the variety, and it is this variety which should be planted when 
the best possible Ash-tree is wanted in this part of the country. The 
Black Ash, Fraxinus nigra, grows as far north as Newfoundland and 
the shores of Lake Winnipeg, that is, further north than the other 
American Ash-trees, and is a common New England tree. It grows 
naturally in deep cold swamps and on the low banks of lakes and 
streams, and long resisted every effort made to establish it in the 
Arboretum until Mr. Dawson tried the experiment of grafting it on 
roots of the White Ash. These grafted plants although still small are 
growing well in peat soil on the left-hand side of the Meadow Road 
near the Rhamnus Collection. Fraxinus pennsylvanica, the so-called 
Red Ash, is another tree widely distributed over the eastern part of 
the continent from New Brunswick and southern Dakota southward. 
It is a smaller tree than the White Ash, rarely growing more than 
fifty or sixty feet tall, with a trunk less than two feet in diameter 
a narrow head of thin foliage, and branchlets covered with pubes¬ 
cence. The inner surface of the bark of this tree is sometimes red 
when first cut; the wood is about as valuable as that of the White 
Ash, but for shade or ornament Fraxinus pennsylvanica is not worth 
planting. The Green Ash is now usually considered a variety of Frax¬ 
inus pennsylvanica (var. lanceolata), and is most abundant in the valley 
of the Mississippi River and westward. It is easily distinguished by 
the bright green color of the two surfaces of the usually narrow leaf¬ 
lets. Seeds of the Green Ash germinate easily and quantities of seed¬ 
ling plants are found on the sand-bars and banks of many western 
