Fraxinus (Ash) Notes

Most campus ashes provide pleasing fall color, though not the most conspicuous ones, the evergreen Shamel ashes around the Claw fountain at the Bookstore. The leaves of most ash species are pinnately compound and characteristically opposite, as in other familiar members of the Oleaceae, including olive, privet, and lilac, though in some ashes they may occur in whorls of three. Female flowers are followed by dry winged fruits called samaras, usually borne in drooping clusters and often persisting through winter on the bare boughs.

Fraxinus is classical Latin for the ash tree. Virgil gave the tree pride of place in the woods: Fraxinus in silvis pulcherrima, pinus in hortis, populus in fluviis, abies in montibus altis – “The ash is fairest in the woods, the pine in gardens, the poplar by rivers, and the fir on high mountains.”

Fresno, the Spanish word for ash, descends from Latin fraxinus. California’s Fresno River, and ultimately Fresno County and the city of Fresno, were named for ashes along the river, probably the native Oregon ash (F. latifolia).