''Fraxinus parryi'', known by common names chaparral ash, crucecilla, and fresnillo, is a species of ash native to southwestern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

, growing as a shrub or a small tree.

Description

Generally growing as a shrub to a tree, the plant has smooth, gray bark. The twigs are cylindric to 4-angled. The buds are glandular-puberulent. The plant bears simple or compound glabrous leaves with 1 to 3 unequal leaflets, with this unevenness especially pronounced in the terminal leaflet, which are shaped attenuate-petiolate. It bears flowers with two petals that are 4.5 to 6.5 mm long. The flowers are bisexual, cream-white. The fruits are 2.2 to 3 cm long, 7 to 9 mm wide, with a body broadly oblong to oblanceolate, flat, and broadly winged to near the base.

Taxonomy

Classification

The chaparral ash was first described by Reid Moran in a 2001 publication of Aliso. It was described as a consequence over confusion about the species of ash common to northwestern Baja California.Moran, R. (2001)
''Fraxinus parryi'', nom. nov., of NW Baja California, Mexico
''Aliso: A Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany'', ''20''(1), 17-20. Initially, the ash species native to northwestern B.C. was described as '' Fraxinus dipetala'' var. ''trifoliolata'', by

John Torrey John Torrey (August 15, 1796 – March 10, 1873) was an American botany, botanist, chemist, and physician. Throughout much of his career, he was a teacher of chemistry, often at multiple universities, while he also pursued botanical work, focus ...

. Torrey himself was uncertain if this represented a distinct species or an extreme form of ''F. dipetala'', as he was working off of a specimen collected in 1850 by Charles C. Parry. George B. Sudworth (1908) and Paul C. Standley (1924) both listed the shrub as ''F. dipetala trifoliolata'', whilst Elbert L. Little (1953) considered it variety ''trifoliolata'', and E. Murray (1985) made it

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

''trifoliolata''. Gertrude N. Miller (1955) and Little (1979) later called it a synonym of ''F. dipetala''. Edward A. Goldman (1916) misidentified it as '' Fraxinus attenuata''. Harlan Lewis and Carl Epling noted the significant morphological differences between ''F. dipetala'' and this plant, with Ira L. Wiggins (1964 and 1980) also treating this ash as its own species. However, Lewis and Epling, along with those who regarded this ash as a new species, like Wiggins, described it as ''F. trifoliata,'' a misspelling of ''trifoliolata''. This, in turn, would make it ''F. trifoliolata'', which is a

homonym In linguistics, homonyms are words which are either; '' homographs''—words that mean different things, but have the same spelling (regardless of pronunciation), or '' homophones''—words that mean different things, but have the same pronunciat ...

of an already existing species of Chinese ash, '' F. trifoliolata'' W. W. Smith (1916), native to

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

and

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

provinces in China. In response to the confusion over the taxonomic classification of the ash, Moran described it as ''Fraxinus parryi'', in honor of the collector C. C. Parry. The classification of ''Fraxinus'' by Eva Wallander in 2008 regards this species as a synonym of ''F. dipetala'', the California ash. However, the Jepson treatment and regional sources like the San Diego Natural History Museum consider ''F. parryi'' to have enough qualifying morphological characteristics to be a separate species, noting that more molecular work will be needed to differentiate the two.

Distribution and habitat

Native to southwestern North America, the chaparral ash is predominantly extant in northwestern Baja California, with a small population north of the border in the United States. In Baja California, it grows on the western side of the peninsula, from the border to the southern end of the Sierra San Pedro Martir. It extends far south enough that it grows with some desert flora, like the Boojum tree, ''Fouquiera columnaris,'' and the cardon, ''Pachycereus pringlei''. In the north, it shares habitat with redshanks, ''Adenostoma sparsifolium,'' and the California juniper, ''Juniperus californica''. The species' northern extent is in southern San Diego County, in Lyons Valley and Lawson Valley, where it is rare and threatened, with the California Native Plant Society designating it with a California Rare Plant Rank of 2B.2 (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA; common elsewhere).California Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB). July 2021
''Special Vascular Plants, Bryophytes, and Lichens List.''
California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Sacramento, CA.

Gallery

File:Chaparral ash 5.jpg, Plant in habitat File:Chaparral ash 4.jpg, Detail of inflorescence File:Chaparral ash 1.jpg, Detail of plant File:Chaparral ash 2.jpg, Plant in habitat

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q28814757 Flora of Baja California Flora of California parryi Trees of Northern America Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands Natural history of San Diego County, California Taxa named by Reid Venable Moran Plants described in 2001