A tree, usually 20°—30° high, with a trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, and ashy gray branchlets pale pubescent when they first appear, becoming glabrous or puberulous during their second season.
Distribution. Mountain cañons at altitudes of 5000°—6000°; in Arizona more common than F. velutina; less abundant in southern New Mexico; in Sonora.
Often used to shade the streets in the towns of southern Arizona.
15. [Fraxinus oregona] Nutt.
Leaves 5′—14′ long, with a stout grooved and angled pubescent, tomentose or glabrous petiole, and usually 5—7, rarely 3, or on young trees occasionally 9, ovate to elliptic or rarely oval or obovate leaflets usually contracted at apex into a short broad point, gradually narrowed at base, and entire or remotely and obscurely serrate, usually coated below and on the petioles with thick pale tomentum when they unfold and pubescent above, or nearly glabrous or pilose with a few scattered hairs, and at maturity light green on the upper surface, paler and usually tomentose, puberulous or rarely glabrous (var. glabra Rehd.), on the lower surface, 3′—7′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with a broad pale midrib, conspicuous veins arcuate near the margins, and reticulate veinlets, the lateral usually sessile, rarely on petiolules up to ½′, or that of the terminal leaflet up to 1′ in length; turning yellow or russet brown in the autumn before falling. Flowers diœcious, appearing in April or May when the leaves begin to unfold, in compact glabrous panicles covered in the bud by broad-ovate scales coated with rufous pubescence; staminate flower composed of a minute calyx, short filaments, and short-oblong apiculate anthers; calyx of the pistillate flower laciniately cut and shorter than the ovary narrowed into a stout style divided into long conspicuous stigmatic lobes. Fruit in ample crowded clusters, oblong, obovate to oblanceolate or elliptic, rounded and often emarginate or acute at apex, 1′—2′ long and ¼′—⅓′ wide, the wing decurrent to the middle or nearly to the attenuate base of the clavate or ellipsoid slightly compressed many-rayed body.
A tree, frequently 70°—80° high, with a long trunk occasionally 4° in diameter, stout branches forming a narrow upright head or a broad shapely crown, and thick terete branchlets more or less densely coated with pale or rarely rufous silky pilose tomentum persistent during their second year or occasionally deciduous during their first summer, becoming light red-brown or orange color, glabrous or puberulous, often covered with a slight glaucous bloom, marked by small remote pale lenticels, and during their first and second winters by the large elevated semiorbicular leaf-scars displaying a short row of conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars, rarely always glabrous (var. glabra Rehd.). Winter-buds: terminal acute, ⅛′—¼′ long, with 4 pairs of scales covered with pale hairs or with rusty pubescence, those of the inner rows often foliaceous at maturity. Bark of the trunk 1′—1½′ thick, dark gray, or brown slightly tinged with red, and deeply divided by interrupted fissures into broad flat ridges separating on the surface into thin scales. Wood light, hard, brittle, coarse-grained, brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood; largely used in the manufacture of furniture, for the frames of carriages and wagons, in cooperage, the interior finish of houses, and for fuel.
Distribution. Usually in rich moist soil in the neighborhood of streams; coast region of southern British Columbia, southward through western Washington and Oregon and the California coast region to the Bay of San Francisco and the Santa Cruz Mountains, and along the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada to those of the mountains of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, California; the var. glabra in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, and east of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County (Ash Creek, near Owens Lake), and occasionally northward in California; most abundant and of its largest size on the bottom-lands of the rivers of southwestern Oregon; one of the most valuable of the deciduous-leaved timber-trees of Pacific North America.
Occasionally cultivated; hardy in the Arnold Arboretum.