Goodding’s Ash
Fraxinus gooddingii
Family: Oleaceae
OTHER NAMES
Spanish: fresnillo
CHARACTERISTICS
Small, semi-evergreen tree (or large shrub) 10-20’. Flowers are inconspicuous (plants are dioecious, male flowers are purple to yellow-green, females are yellow-green) appearing in March-April followed by a samara (winged dry fruit with one seed). Very rare in the trade.
LANDSCAPE USE
Screening large shrub or small tree.
GROWING CONDITIONS
AN EXPLANAITION OF TERMS USED
SUN full to part sun
WATER moderate to low water
SOIL well-drained
BASIN middle
CONTAINER does ok in a container
HARDINESS hardy to 10°F
FEEDING moderate to low
Photo by Sue Carnahan, SEINET
Fraxinus gooddingii on iNaturalist
ECOLOGY
Larval host for the incense cedar sphinx (Sphinx libocedrus) and the two-tailed swallowtail (Papilio multicaudata multicaudata), nectar-rich flowers for butterflies and bees, seeds for granivorous birds.
ETHNOBOTANY
Unknown.
NATURAL DISTRIBUTION
Dry, rocky slopes and ridges of canyons; in desert, grassland, and oak woodland in Arizona and into the northern end of the Sierra Madre Occidental, in Sonora and Chihuahua and also on Isla Tiburón and Shark Island in the Gulf of California.
TAXONOMY AND NAME
This plant is in the Oleaceae, the olive family. There are 63 species of Fraxinus.
Fraxinus is the classical Latin name for the genus, while the species name, gooddingii, honors Leslie Newton Goodding (1880–1967) was an American botanist who was considered an expert in the flora of the Southwestern United States.
Plants develop spreading canopies as trees, photo by Eric Hough, iNaturalist
The foliage is semi-evergreen, but even evergreen plants will switch out leaves when spring warms up. Photo by Sue Carnahan, SEINET
The flowers are small, but nectar rich. These are male flowers. Photo by Sue Carnahan, SEINET
The fruits are a winged samara, photo by rpmundo, iNaturalist