Fraxinus pennsylvanica var. lanceolata Sarg. Green Ash.
Leaves with rather narrower and shorter and usually more sharply serrate leaflets lustrous and bright green on both surfaces, and glabrous or pubescent along the midrib below.
A round-topped tree, rarely more than 60° high, or with a trunk more than 2° in diameter, slender spreading branches, ashy gray terete glabrous branchlets marked by pale lenticels, and rusty-pubescent bud-scales.
Distribution. Banks of streams; valley of the Penobscot River (Orono, Penobscot County), Maine, to northern Vermont and the valley of the St. Lawrence River, near Montreal, Province of Quebec, and to the valley of the Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan), and in the United States westward to North Dakota, eastern Wyoming to the base of the Bighorn Mountains, and on the mountains of northern Montana, and southward to western Florida to the valley of the lower Apalachicola River, Dallas County, Alabama, central Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma to Comanche County, and Texas to the valley of the Guadalupe River; most abundant in the basin of the Mississippi River; attaining its largest size on the rich bottom-lands of eastern Texas and here often 60°—70° high, with a trunk 2°—3° in diameter; on the southern Appalachian Mountains ascending to altitudes of 2000°—2500°. As it usually grows in the east with its bright green glabrous leaves and glabrous branchlets the Green Ash appears distinct from the Red Ash, but trees occur over the area which it inhabits, but more often westward, with slightly pubescent leaves and branchlets which may be referred as well to one tree as to the other and make it impossible to distinguish satisfactorily as species the Green and Red Ash.
Often planted as a shade and ornamental tree in the middle western and occasionally in the eastern states, but less valuable than the White Ash.
13. [Fraxinus Berlandieriana] DC.
Leaves 3′—7′ long, with a slender petiole, and 3—5 lanceolate, elliptic or obovate leaflets, acuminate or abruptly acuminate or acute at apex, cuneate or rarely rounded at base, mostly entire or remotely serrate, thin, dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, rather paler and glabrous or furnished with small axillary tufts of white hairs on the lower surface, 3′—4′ long and ½′—1½′ wide; petiolules slender, 1¼′—1⅓′ or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1½′ in length. Flowers diœcious, in a short glabrous panicle inclosed in the bud by broad-ovate rounded chestnut-brown pubescent scales; staminate flower with a minute obscurely lobed calyx and 2 stamens, with short filaments and linear-oblong apiculate anthers; calyx of the pistillate flower cup-shaped, deeply divided, and as long as the ovary gradually narrowed into the slender style. Fruit ripening in May, oblong-obovate to spatulate, acute or acuminate at apex, 1′—1½′ long and ¼′ wide, the wing decurrent nearly to the base of the compressed many-rayed clavate body gradually narrowed into a long slender base surrounded by the enlarged deeply lobed calyx.
A tree, rarely more than 30° high, or with a trunk more than a foot in diameter, and terete slender branchlets light green when they first appear, becoming in their first winter light brown tinged with red or ashy gray, and marked by occasional lenticels and by the small elevated nearly circular leaf-scars displaying a short row of large fibro-vascular bundle-scars. Winter-buds: terminal acute, with dark brown puberulous scales. Bark of the trunk dark gray tinged with red, 1′—1½′ thick, and divided by shallow interrupted fissures into narrow ridges. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood.