Fraxinus mandshurica Rupr.

A fine tree often 100 ft high; young shoots glabrous, greyish. Leaves 8 to 15 in. long; leaflets stalkless, or nearly so, usually nine or eleven, sometimes seven or thirteen, oval or oblong-lanceolate, 2 to 41⁄2 in. long, 1 to 2 in. wide, tapered to the base, slender-pointed, sharply (occasionally doubly) toothed, dull green and with scattered bristles above, paler beneath, and more conspicuously bristly, especially on the midrib and veins; main leaf-stalk winged above, the two wings forming a deep groove with tufts of brown down where the leaflets join.

Native of Japan and the adjacent parts of the Asiatic mainland; introduced to Kew from St Petersburg in 1882. It is one of the greatest failures among ashes on account of its suspectibility to injury by spring frost. Its broadly winged fruits, which Sargent says are borne on the previous year’s wood in great clusters, have not been produced in Britain. It is a valuable tree in the Far East, and attains to noble dimensions there. The leaf is distinct in the conspicuous sunken veins above, correspondingly prominent beneath. Closely allied to F. nigra.