aphili8's Favorites

Two species of Fraxinus are often growing together in wetlands of southern Illinois and can be easily confused. My first photo compares the fruit of F. pennsylvanica and F. profunda. Other characters can be used, but mature fruit is a good one. Fraxinus profunda has the larger fruit and is on the right side of the first photo and F. pennsylvannica has the smaller fruit.

White Ash - Fraxinus americana (female tree of this dioecious species)
I did a series to document the ID of this species, which can be a little confounding, at least to me. This tree was found with samaras in a suburban woodlot in Durham NC (USA). Soil is hydric to mesic at that location. The other species to be expected in this area is Green Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica). Characters I see indicating Fraxinus americana vs. pennsylvanica are:

• leaves whitish (glaucous) beneath, "minutely honeycombed-reticulate" at high magnification (Weakley); with "dense minute rounded projections" (Duncan and Duncan)
• bud sits within the U-shaped scar, i.e., upper edge of leaf scars deeply notched, or "petiole bases and leaf scars V- to U- or crescent-shaped with a deeply concave or notched upper margin" (Weakley and most references, but a variable character!)
• terminal buds obtuse, with 4-6 brownish scales (Duncan and Duncan)
• "samaras 25-32 mm long, samara wings 3-5 mm wide, samara bodies (5-) 6-11 mm long, 1.5-2.5 mm wide; twigs, petioles, petiolules, and rachises glabrous" (Weakley)

References

• Carolina Nature (Will Cook) www.carolinanature.com/trees/fram.html
• Duncan and Duncan, Trees of the Southeastern United States (Univ. Georgia Press, 1988), p. 57-59, plates 45, 47
• Weakley, Flora of the Southeastern United States (UNC Herbarium, 2020), p. 1291

[series of photos] A young Black Ash (~less than 10cm diameter at breast height, likely ~6-8m tall), growing among many others in the perimeter swamps of the Minesing Wetland complex. This species is commonly found in the swamps along the southeast edge of the Minesing Wetland complex, and is dominant in a few areas (though damage/death, potentially from Emerald Ash Borer, is present in this area). This particular individual had very corky bark (photos), making it a good case example. Numerous photos provided; a lower branch allowed for some close ups of a terminal bud, bud scar and the pubescence typical of the place where the sessile leaflets join the rachis of the compound leaf.

A life species for me! This little squirrel was digging seeds out of the snow under the bird feeder. I've thought we might have flying squirrels here because sometimes late at night, we hear the typical sounds of red or gray squirrels racing along the outside of our log cabin walls, but likely not either of those diurnal species.

Photos taken through window glass and screen (left on to prevent window hits).