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A tree attaining 60 feet in height. Shoots glabrous, green, stout, conspicuously marked by very prominent leaf-bases; lenticels white. Leaves (Plate 263, Fig. 10), small, always in whorls of threes or fours. Leaflets usually three, occasionally five to seven on some of the branchlets, sessile, lanceolate to ovate, base cuneate, apex acuminate, sharply and coarsely serrate, the serrations with incurved points, glabrous on both surfaces. Rachis of the leaf narrowly winged, the wings not meeting above, but forming an open groove.

Flowers (section Fvaxinaster) in short racemes in the axils of the leaf-scars of the preceding year’s shoot; without calyx or corolla. Fruit ovate-oblong; apex rounded, truncate or acuminate, ending in a mucro.

This species occurs in Syria, Kurdistan, Persia, Baluchistan, and Afghanistan.

The occurrence always of the leaves in whorls, a phenomenon met with in individual instances in other species, appears to be constant in this species. On strong shoots leaves with five to seven leaflets exceptionally appear ; those with three leaflets, however, being by far the most common. Small specimens of this

tree are growing at Kew, but it does not seem likely to be worth growing in England. (A.H.)

A small tree. Branchlets green, glabrous; lenticels few, oval, white. Buds laterally compressed and not quadrangular, narrowed and rounded at the apex; external scales four, densely brown pubescent, inner pair longer than the outer pair. Leaflets (Plate 266, Fig. 27), eleven to thirteen, 1 to 2} inches long, sessile, oval or lanceolate, with unequal base and acuminate apex, sharply and irregularly serrate, some of the serrations being often triangular and spreading ; under surface pubescent near the base with brown tomentum, often occurring only on the inner side of the midrib. Leaf-rachis, with scattered pubescence, densest at the nodes; strongly winged, the wings meeting above in part of their length. Fruit described as broadly linear, with almost parallel sides, truncate and emarginate at the apex.

The native country of this species is unknown; and it is possibly a hybrid, as

1 Fraxinus sogdiana, Bunge, Mém. Sav. Etrang. Acad. Pétersbourg, vii. 390 (1851), occurring in Turkestan, formerly supposed to be identical with this species, is considered distinct by Koehne in Gartenflora, 1899, p. 288, and by Lingelsheim, in Engler, Bot. Jahrb. xl. 222 (1907).