43 
rivers. It is a popular tree, therefore, in western nurseries, and, al¬ 
though not suited for the purpose, has been largely planted in the west 
as a street and shade tree, and occasionally also in the east for Amer¬ 
ican nurseries have often substituted it for the White Ash. Another 
Ash of the Mississippi Valley, the Blue Ash of popular tree books, 
Fraxinus quadrangulata, owes its scientific name to its four-angled 
branchlets. This is one of the noble trees of the American forest, 
almost rivalling the White Ash in size. This tree grows naturally in 
limestone soil, but it has grown well in the Arboretum where it is 
helped by occasional applications of lime. Two southern trees related 
to the White Ash, Fraxinus biltmoriana , with densely pubescent 
branchlets, of the southern Appalachian region and westward, and F. 
texensis with rounded leaflets and a native of central and western Texas, 
are established in the Arboretum. Three species of the southeastern 
states and the five species of New Mexico and Arizona will probably 
never live very long in Massachusetts, although the curious little Frax¬ 
inus anomala with square branchlets and leaves usually reduced to a 
single leaflet at one time flourished in the Arboretum during several 
years. Fraxinus oregona, the Pacific coast Ash-tree, is a large and 
handsome tree and one of the few valuable deciduous-leaved timber 
trees of the northwest. It has proved hardy in the Arboretum where 
it grows well but where it will probably never.become a large tree. 
Of the Old-World Ash-trees the best known is Fraxinus excelsior , 
one of the important timber trees of the world, and as it grows in 
western and central Europe often a magnificent tree sometimes nearly 
one hundred and fifty feet high with a tall massive trunk three or four 
feet in diameter. A number of abnormal forms of this tree have ap¬ 
peared in European nurseries and plantations, but F. excelsior and its 
varieties are miserable trees in New England and should not be planted 
here. Fraxinus rotundifolia and its variety with pendulous branches 
are established in the Arboretum. They are small trees, natives of 
southern Europe and southwestern Asia, and although interesting from 
the botanists’ point of view add little to the beauty of a collection 
of trees. An Ash-tree from Turkestan and Songaria ( F . potamo- 
phylla) was raised at the Arboretum in 1878 and has grown rapidly 
into a handsome, shapely and hardy tree. As an ornamental tree this 
is the most promising of the exotic Ashes which have been planted in 
the Arboretum. The great Ash-tree of northeastern Asia, Fraxinus 
mandshurica , inhabits eastern Siberia, Manchuria, Korea, and north¬ 
ern Japan. It is a really splendid tree and produces wood of ex¬ 
ceptionally good quality. This tree was first raised in the Arboretum 
in 1878. It is hardy and grows well for a few years but soon begins 
to fail and become unsightly, and no place has yet been found in the 
Arboretum which suits it. In 1882 the Arboretum received seeds from 
Peking of Fraxinus chinensis var. rhyncophylla ; it has grown well 
and has now flowered and produced fertile seeds for several years. It 
is a small and not particularly shapely tree, and is most interesting 
in winter, for the buds are unlike those of other Ash-trees and are 
globose, half an inch in diameter with broad scales covered with a 
thick coat of rufous tomentum. The outer scales, which are smaller 
than the others, do not as in most Ash-trees cover the bud which is 
enclosed by the second pair of scales; and on the terminal bud these 
