Fraxinus xanthoxyloides (G. Don) Wall. ex A. DC.

In Pakistan common in the northern zone and Baluchistan, in temperate valleys, 1000-2500 m. The wood is hard, white and close-grained; used for tool-handles and walking sticks. The foliage is used as fodder.

Shrubs or small trees. Bark grey, smooth and lenticellate when young, dark and much cracked on older stems; branches stiff. Leaves opposite, 8-12 cm long (on shrubs sometimes only 2 cm long), midrib winged; leaflets 5-11, up to 4 cm long and 2.5 cm broad, ovate-lanceolate or ovate-oblong, crenate, glabrous or slightly hairy on midrib beneath, sessile or subsessile. Flowers in dense heads, appearing before or with the young leaves on shoots of the previous year; bracts wooly, brown. Calyx lacking in male flowers, small and persistent in bisexual flowers. Corolla lacking. Filaments short, anthers oblong. Samarae spatulate, often emarginate, 3-4 cm long, in dense fascicles, rachis hardly 5 mm long.

Shrubs or small trees to 7 m. Branchlets terete and smooth. Leaves 8-12 cm, sometimes only 2 cm on shrubby twigs; petiole 1-1.5 cm; axis with winged ridges; leaflets (5-) 7-11(-13), sessile or subsessile; leaflet blade ovate-lanceolate or narrowly elliptic, (0.5-)3-4(-5.5) × 0.5-1.5 cm, subleathery, glabrous except for white puberulent abaxial base of midrib, base cuneate, slightly oblique, margin crenate, lower part entire, apex obtuse or acute; primary veins ca. 4 on each side of midrib. Cymose panicles lateral at branches of previous year, ca. 5 mm. Flowers polygamous, appearing before leaves. Corolla absent. Staminate flowers without calyx. Bisexual flowers with a minute, cupular calyx persistent in fruit. Samara oblong-linear, 3-5 cm × ca. 5 mm; wing decurrent to lower part of nutlet. Fl. Apr, fr. Oct. 2n = 46.

Distribution: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Hindukush and Himalayan mountains.

Xizang [Afghanistan, India, Kashmir, Pakistan; N Africa]

Fl. Per.: April. Fruit: October.

Dry slopes in valleys; 1000-2800 m.

Ornus xanthoxyloides G. Don, Gen. Hist. 4: 57. 1837.

Fraxinus xanthoxyloides, the Afghan ash or Algerian ash, is a species of ash tree. It is found from Morocco to China. Some authorities originally described the African specimens as a distinct species, Fraxinus dimorpha.