Leaves revolute in the bud, oblong, acute or acuminate at apex, gradually narrowed at base, obscurely crenulate-serrate with remote teeth, or sometimes nearly entire, coated below when they unfold with pale tomentum, glabrous or tomentose above, and furnished on the margins with minute dark caducous glands, and at maturity subcoriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler and pubescent on the lower surface, 5′—6′ long and 1′—2′ wide, with a broad midrib rounded and sometimes puberulous on the upper side, inconspicuous arcuate veins and reticulate veinlets; northward and at high altitudes falling in the autumn, and southward remaining on the branches until after the opening of the flowers the following spring; petioles stout, slightly winged, ⅓′—½′ in length. Flowers: flower-clusters inclosed in the bud by ovate acute orange-colored scales brown and ciliate on the margins, each of the flower-buds surrounded by 3 imbricated oblong bracts rounded or pointed at apex and ciliate on the margins, the longest as long as the calyx and one third longer than the 2 lateral bracts; flowers fragrant, opening from the 1st of March at the south to the middle of May on the southern Appalachian Mountains, on short pedicels enlarged into thick hemispheric receptacles covered with long white hairs, in nearly sessile many-flowered clusters in the axils of leaves of the previous year; calyx oblong, cup-shaped, dark green and puberulous, with minute ovate scarious lobes rounded at apex; corolla creamy white, ¼′ long, with rounded lobes; stamens exserted, with slender filaments united at base into 5 clusters, and orange-colored anthers; ovary 3-celled, furnished on the top with 5 dark nectariferous glands placed opposite the lobes of the calyx, and abruptly contracted into a slender style gradually thickened toward the apex and longer than the corolla. Fruit ripening in the summer or early autumn, ovoid, ¼′ long, dark orange-colored or brown; seed ovoid, pointed, with a thin papery chestnut-brown coat.
A tree, occasionally 30°—35° high, with a short trunk barely exceeding 6′-8′ in diameter, slender upright branches forming an open head, and stout terete pithy branchlets light green and coated with pale or rufous tomentum when they first appear, or sometimes glabrous, and covered with scattered white hairs, reddish brown to ashy gray, tinged with red and usually more or less pubescent or often covered with a glaucous bloom during their first and second years, later growing darker, roughened by occasional small elevated lenticels and marked by the low horizontal obcordate leaf-scars displaying a central cluster of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars; or more often a shrub. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, covered with broad-ovate nearly triangular acute scales, those of the inner rows accrescent on the young branchlets, and at maturity oblong-obovate, rounded and often apiculate at apex, light green, glabrous or pilose, ciliate on the margins, and often ½′ in length. Bark of the trunk ⅓′—½′ thick, ashy gray slightly tinged with red, divided by occasional narrow fissures and roughened by wart-like excrescences. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light red or brown, with thick lighter colored often nearly white sapwood of 18—20 layers of annual growth. The leaves are sweet to the taste and are devoured in the autumn by cattle and horses, and, like the bark, yield a yellow dye occasionally used domestically. The bitter aromatic roots have been used as a tonic.
Distribution. Moist rich soil, often in the shade of dense forests; peninsula of Delaware to northern Florida and from the coast to altitudes of nearly 4000° on the Blue Ridge in North and South Carolina, and to eastern Texas and southern Arkansas; in the Gulf states usually along the borders of Cypress-swamps.
LX. OLEACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, scaly buds, their inner scales accrescent, opposite leaves, without stipules, and fibrous roots. Flowers perfect, diœcious or polygamous, regular; calyx 4-lobed, or 0; corolla of 2—4 petals, or 0; disk 0; stamens 2—4, rudimentary or 0 in unisexual pistillate flowers; anthers attached on the back below the middle, often apiculate by the prolongation of the connective, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally usually by lateral slits; ovary free, 2 or rarely 3-celled, rudimentary or 0 in the staminate flower; style simple; ovules 2 in each cell, pendulous, anatropous; micropyle superior. Fruit (in the North American arborescent genera) a samara or berry. Seed pendulous; seed-coat membranaceous; embryo straight in copious fleshy albumen; cotyledons flat, much longer than the short terete superior radicle turned toward the minute hilum.
The Olive family with twenty-five genera is widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions chiefly in the northern hemisphere. Of the five genera indigenous to the United States four are arborescent. To this family belong Olea europæa L., the Olive-tree of the Mediterranean basin, now largely cultivated in California for its fruit, and the Lilacs, Forsythias, Privets, and Jasmines, favorite garden plants in all countries with temperate climates.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Fruit a winged samara; leaves usually compound.1. [Fraxinus.] Fruit a drupe; leaves simple. Flowers usually without petals.2. [Forestiera.] Flowers with petals. Corolla of 4 long linear petals united only at base; leaves deciduous.3. [Chionanthus.] Corolla tubular; leaves persistent.4. [Osmanthus.]
1. FRAXINUS L. Ash.
Trees or shrubs, with thick furrowed or rarely thin and scaly bark, usually ash-colored branchlets, with thick pith, and compressed obtuse terminal buds much larger than the lateral buds. Leaves petiolate, unequally pinnate or rarely reduced to a single leaflet, deciduous; leaflets conduplicate in the bud, usually serrate, petiolulate or sessile. Flowers diœcious or polygamous, produced in early spring on slender elongated pedicels, without bractlets, in open or compact slender-branched panicles, with obovate linear or lanceolate caducous bracts, terminal on leafy shoots of the year, developed from the axils of new leaves, or from separate buds in the axils of leaves of the previous year, or at the base of young branchlets, and covered by 2 ovate scales; calyx campanulate, deciduous or persistent under the fruit, or 0; corolla 2—4-parted, the divisions conduplicate in the bud, united at base, or 0; stamens usually 2, rarely 3 or 4, inserted on the base of the corolla, or hypogynous; filaments terete, short or rarely elongated; anthers ovoid or linear-oblong, the cells opening by lateral slits; ovary 2 or rarely 3-celled, contracted into a short or elongated style terminating in a 2-lobed stigma; ovules suspended in pairs from the inner angle of the cell; raphe dorsal. Fruit a 1 or rarely 2 or 3-seeded winged samara; body terete or slightly flattened contrary to the septum, with a dry or woody pericarp produced into an elongated more or less decurrent wing, usually 1-celled by abortion or sometimes 2 or 3-celled and winged. Seed solitary in each cell, oblong, compressed, gradually narrowed and rounded at the ends, filling the cavity of the fruit; seed-coat chestnut-brown.