Distribution. Mountain cañons at altitudes of 5500°—8000°; New Mexico (Lincoln, Grant and Luna Counties); Arizona (Cochise, Pima and Coconino Counties); on the San José Mountains, Sonora, at an altitude of 7200°; passing into var. lasia Rehd. with branchlets, lower surface of the 7 leaflets and petioles densely tomentose; in Oak Creek and Sycamore cañons south of Flagstaff, Coconino County, at Fort Apache, Navajo County, on the White Mountains, Graham County, and on the Chiricahua Mountains, Cochise County, Arizona; and near Santa Rita, Grant County, New Mexico. A single plant, possibly a shrub, of the Mexican Fraxinus papilosa Ling. differing chiefly from F. Standleyi in the glaucous papillose under surface of the leaves, has been seen at an altitude of 6750° on the west sides of the San Luis Mountains, Grant County, New Mexico.
8. [Fraxinus americana] L. White Ash.
Leaves 8′—12′ long, with a stout grooved petiole, and 5—9, usually 7, ovate to oblanceolate or oval, often falcate abruptly pointed or acuminate leaflets, cuneate or rounded at base, crenulate-serrate or nearly entire, thin but firm, dark green above, pale or light green and glabrous or slightly pubescent below, or rarely thicker, lanceolate, long-acuminate, entire, glabrous and silvery white below (var. crassifolia Sarg.), 3′—5′ long and 1½′—3′ wide, with a broad midrib, and numerous conspicuous veins arcuate near the margins; falling early in the autumn after turning on some individuals deep purple and on others clear bright yellow; petiolules ¼′—½′ or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1′ in length. Flowers diœcious, opening before the leaves late in the spring, in compact ultimately elongated glabrous panicles from buds covered with dark ovate scales rounded at apex and slightly keeled on the back; calyx campanulate, slightly 4-lobed in the staminate flower, and deeply lobed or laciniately cut in the pistillate flower; stamens 2 or occasionally 3, with short stout filaments, and large oblong-ovate apiculate anthers at first nearly black, later becoming reddish purple; ovary contracted into a long slender style divided into 2 spreading dark purple stigmatic lobes. Fruit rarely deeply tinged with purple (f. iodocarpa Fern.), 1′—2½′ long and usually about ¼′ wide, or sometimes not more than ½′ long (var. microcarpa A. Gray), in crowded clusters 6′—8′ in length, lanceolate or oblanceolate, surrounded at base by the persistent calyx, the wing pointed or emarginate at apex and terminal or slightly decurrent on the terete body.
A tree, sometimes 120° high, with a tall massive trunk 5°—6° in diameter, stout upright or spreading branches forming in the forest a narrow crown, or with sufficient space a round-topped or pyramidal head, and thick terete branchlets dark green or brown tinged with red and covered with scattered pale caducous hairs when they first appear, soon becoming light orange color or ashy gray and marked by pale lenticels, becoming in their first winter gray or light brown, lustrous, often covered with a glaucous bloom and roughened by the large pale semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying near the margins a line of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds: terminal broad-ovoid, obtuse, with 4 pairs of scales, those of the outer pair ovate, acute, apiculate, conspicuously keeled on the back, nearly black, slightly puberulous, about one half the length of the scales of the second pair rather shorter than those of the third pair, lengthening with the young shoots, and at maturity oblong-ovate, narrowed and rounded at apex, keeled, ½′ long, and rusty-pubescent, the scales of the inner pair becoming ⅔′ long, ovate, pointed, keeled, sometimes slightly pinnatifid, green tinged with brown toward the apex, covered with pellucid dots and very lustrous. Bark of the trunk 1′—3′ thick, dark brown or gray tinged with red, and deeply divided by narrow fissures into broad flattened ridges separating on the surface into thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, tough, and brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood; used in large quantities in the manufacture of agricultural implements, for the handles of tools, in carriage-building, for oars and furniture, and in the interior finish of buildings; the most valuable of the American species as a timber-tree.
Distribution. Common in rich rather moist soil on low hills, and in the neighborhood of streams; Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, southern Quebec and Ontario and the southern peninsula of Michigan, and westward and southward to eastern Minnesota, central Iowa, southeastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, and northern Oklahoma to the valley of the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River in Woods County (near Alva, G. W. Stevens), and to Florida to Taylor County and the valley of the lower Apalachicola River, and through the Gulf states to the valley of the Trinity River, Texas; of its largest size on the bottom-lands of the basin of the lower Ohio River; southward and west of the Mississippi River less common and of smaller size; on the Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 3800°; the var. crassifolia at Mt. Victory, Harding County, Ohio, Campbell, Dunklin County, Missouri, and near Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas.
Often planted in the eastern states as a shade and ornamental tree, and occasionally in western and northern Europe.
A form with the wing of the fruit extending nearly to the middle of the body distinguished as Fraxinus Smallii Britt. has the appearance of a hybrid between F. americana and F. pennsylvanica var. lanceolata; individuals of this form have been found near McGuire’s Mill, on the Yellow River, Guinnett County, Georgia; near Rochester, Munroe County, New York; and near Lake Wingra, Dane County, Wisconsin.
9. [Fraxinus texensis] Sarg. Mountain Ash.
