FRAXINUS BILTMOREANA, Biltmore Ash
- Fraxinus Biltmoreana, Beadle, Bot. Gazette, xxv. 358 (1898); Sargent, Zvees V. Amer. 773, fig. 618 (1905).
- Fraxinus catawbiensis, Ashe, Bot. Gazetfe, xxxil. 230 (1902).
A tree attaining in America, according to Ashe, over 100 feet in height, with a girth of about 7 feet. Young shoots covered with a dense white pubescence, retained in the second year; lenticels few, conspicuous, narrow, long, white. Leaflets (Plate 266, Fig. 30), seven to nine, about 4 inches long, oval or oblong (the terminal one on a long stalk, broadly oval or obovate), abruptly tapering and unequal at the base, acuminate at the apex, remotely serrate (the serrations often obsolete, so that the margin is nearly entire), with occasional scattered cilia ; distinctly stalked with pubescent petiolules, ⅜ to ½ inch long; upper surface dark green, glabrous except for a little pubescence towards the base of the leaflet ; lower surface white in colour, with a thin fine short pubescence, densest on the sides of the midrib and nerves. Rachis of the leaf slender, terete, finely pubescent, not grooved or only slightly grooved towards the apex.
Flowers (section Leptalix) dicecious in pubescent panicles in the axils of the leaf-scars of the previous year; corolla absent. Fruit girt at the base by the persistent calyx; body, short, elliptical, many-nerved; wing not decurrent, only slightly narrowed at the ends, emarginate at the apex.
Buds shortly ovoid, with four outer visible scales, equal in length, the external pair overlapping the inner pair; scales carinate, obtuse at the apex, orange-coloured, and covered with a scaly pubescence.
This species, as regards leaf-characters, looks like a pubescent Fraxinus americana;* and is readily distinguished from F. pennsylvanica by the leaflet being white in colour beneath, with a finer pubescence, and being more abruptly tapering and unequal at the base, with shallower and remoter serrations, which often become obsolete. The rachis of the leaf is like that of F. americana.
According to Sargent, it occurs on the banks of streams from northern West Virginia through the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia and Alabama, and to middle Tennessee.
This species in the United States has apparently been considered to be a form of F. pennsylvanica, and has been in cultivation probably as long. At Fawley Court, Oxfordshire, the residence of W.D. Mackenzie, Esq., there are two fine trees. The largest, in a shrubbery, rather crowded by other trees, is about 80 feet in height by 7 feet 3 inches in girth. The other, standing in the open, is a very well-shaped vigorous tree (Plate 247), measuring 68 feet by 6 feet 6 inches. Both are bearing mistletoe and grow in good alluvial soil. The bark is grey in colour, and fissured like that of the white ash. (A.H.)
1 Beadle says that this species bears the same relation to F. americana as F. pennsylvanica bears to F. lanceolata. Lingelsheim, op. cit. 191, 222, considers this species to be a hybrid, between F. americana and F. pennsylvanica; but its wide distribution and abundance in the forest are not favourable to his view.
