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Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Fraxinus pennsylvanica' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
A tree 40 to 60 ft, sometimes more, high; bark as in the white ash, but less deeply furrowed; young shoots clothed more or less densely with a pale down. Leaves up to 1 ft long; leaflets seven or nine (occasionally five), oblong-lanceolate or narrowly oval, 3 to 6 in. long, 1 to 2 in. wide, broadly tapered at the base, long and slenderly pointed, rather obscurely toothed, or entire, especially at the lower half, dull green on both surfaces, and nearly or quite glabrous above, except along the sunken midrib which sometimes is downy, covered beneath with a pale down. The leaflets, especially the lower ones, are stalked, the stalks grooved and downy, as is also the common stalk. Male and female flowers occur on separate trees, and are produced on the old wood just below the new shoot. Fruits 1 to 2 in. long, rather variable in shape; wing extending half-way or more down the cylindrical body.
American foresters and many botanists no longer make a distinction between the red ash (i.e., typical F. pennsylvanica) and the following variety:
specimens: Kew, of several trees the largest is 92 × 71⁄2 ft (1979) and of var. subintegerrima, 68 × 61⁄2 ft (1980); Oxford Botanic Garden, 50 × 3 ft early this century, now 85 × 9 ft (1983).
Leaflets mottled with yellow. This garden variety in some of its characters is intermediate between the typical state of F. pennsylvanica and the var. subintegerrima; the leaves are far from being as downy as in the former, but the shoots are quite downy. A handsome variegated tree.
Synonyms
F. lanceolata Borkh.
F. pennsylvanica var. lanceolata (Borkh.) Sarg