Gregg's Ash
Fraxinus greggii
Family: Oleaceae
CHARACTERISTICS
Evergreen large shrub or small tree, 15x15’. Plants are dioecious (separate female and male plants), and have inconspicuous flowers that appear in spring. Small samara fruits (dry, winged, single seeded).
LANDSCAPE USE
Screening shrub or small tree.
GROWING CONDITIONS
AN EXPLANAITION OF TERMS USED
SUN full to part sun
WATER moderate water
SOIL not picky, but well-drained
BASIN middle
CONTAINER does moderately ok in a container but will not attain full size
HARDINESS hardy to 10°F
FEEDING moderate to low
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
Native to west Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, south into Jalisco and Veracruz in Mexico, this large evergreen shrub grows at lower elevations along arroyos and on bluffs, talus slopes, arroyos and canyons.
TAXONOMY AND NAME
This plant is in the Oleaceae, the olive family. There are 63 species of Fraxinus widespread throughout much of Europe, Asia, and North America..
Fraxinus is the classical Latin name for ash trees, while the specific epithet, “greggii,” was given for Josiah Gregg, (1806-1850), an American merchant, explorer, naturalist, and author of Commerce of the Prairies, about the American Southwest and parts of northern Mexico. He collected many previously undescribed plants on his merchant trips and during the Mexican–American War.
Plants are naturally shrub-like until later. Photo by Ricardo Jaimes-López, iNaturalist
Foliage detail, photo by Guillermo Rodriguez, iNaturalist
Flowers are tiny, and plants are dioecious (separate male and female plants). Photo by Carlos G Velazco-Macias, iNaturalist
Fruits are a samara, photo by Ana Nuño, iNaturalist