Rowan - Mountain Ash Tree
( Pyrus aucuparia)

LIKE the Pear and the Apple, the Rowan, now, perhaps, better known by the somewhat misleading name of Mountain Ash, is a member of the genus Pyrus, in the natural order Rosacea. This genus of the Rose tribe is characterized by its apple-like fruits, or "pomes," with a cartilaginous "core" or "endocarp"--the Hawthorns and Medlars, which form allied genera, having more stony centers to their fruits. The Rowan, the White Beam, and the Service Trees form together a sub-genus, known as Sorbus, distinguished by having their small white flowers in branched clusters, technically known as "cymes," which are followed by groups of small berry-like fruits containing but few seeds. The small trees constituting this sub-genus are rather closely lied to one another, differing mainly in the form of their leaves and in the shape and color of their fruit. The Rowan is, indeed, sometimes known as the Fowlers' Service Tree, the first word in which name, together with its specific Latin name aucuparia, refers to the long-established use of its berries as a lure by bird-catchers, auceps being the Latin for a fowler.

The name "Service" has nothing to do with this use for the fruit, nor with the ordinary sense of that word, but is from the Latin cerevisia, beer, the berries of all the group having once been largely used in brewing. John Evelyn, in his "Sylva," speaks of the fruit of the Rowan as affording "an incomparable drink, familiar in Wales;" and whilst there they are most commonly only made into an infusion, in Kamtschatka and other north-eastern countries a spirit is distilled from them, and in the north of Europe they have, in times of scarcity, been even dried and ground into flour.

The name of Rowan has been somewhat improbably derived from the roan color of the bark; but though this appellation is probably of a far different origin, there can be little doubt that it is to this gray and smooth rind, its graceful, ascending branches, and "pinnate" leaves, that it owes the name of Ash. Even its clusters of white blossoms resemble at a distance those of the Flowering or Manna Ash (Fraxinus ornus) of the Continent, though the true Ash trees have no relationship to this rosaceous plant.

Whilst the White Beam and Wild Service are also common in rocky, hilly, or even mountainous situations, it is especially the Rowan that rejoices in bleak, rocky crags, overhanging the gills and becks of mountains. It grows at an altitude of 2,600 feet in the Scottish Highlands, and thus well deserves the prefix "Mountain" to its name. Springing from some bare ledge of yellow sandstone or gray limestone, but conspicuous even in the thickest leafage by its characteristically tinted fruits, in such situations it might well require a poet to describe--

"How clung the Rowan to the rock,
And through the foliage showed his head,
With narrow leaves and berries red."

It was in such situations that it struck the artistic fancy of William Gilpin, who, in his "Forest Scenery," after mentioning that in the Scottish Highlands it often becomes a considerable tree, speaks of it as follows:

"There, on some rocky mountains, covered with dark pines and waving birch, which cast a solemn gloom over the lake below, a few mountain ashes joining in a clump, and mixing with them, have a fine effect. In summer the light green tint of their foliage, and in autumn the glowing berries which hang clustering upon them, contrast beautifully with the deeper green of the pines; and if they are happily blended, and not in too large a proportion, they add some of the most picturesque furniture with which the sides of those rugged mountains are invested."

Having a wan-hued bark and lurid fruit, and growing in wild woodland and moor, much legendary lore has collected round this species, and it seems to have been used by witches in divination, its name "Rowan" being said to be connected with the Gothic word "run," a whisper, a mystery, divination, or a magic letter, from "runer," to know. Homoeopathy is a great deal older than the time of Hahnemann, so that the Mountain Ash became of high repute as a protection against witchcraft, as witness the proverb--

"Rowan tree and red thread
Put the witches to their speed,"

a belief also alluded to in the old poem of "The Laidlet Worm of Spindleston Heughs," in the lines--

"Their spells were vain, the boys return'd
To the queen in sorrowful mood,
Crying that witches have no power
Where there is roan-tree wood."

The Mountain Ash attains a height of from ten to thirty feet, and sometimes exceeds two feet in diameter, growing very rapidly at first. It reaches eight or nine feet in the first five, and sometimes as much as twenty feet in the first ten years, after which it spreads out into a loosely branching head, increasing but slowly in height. This mode of growth, rapid at first, and never densely shady, renders it valuable to the forester as a "nurse" for oak plantations, more especially as its perfect hardiness renders it tolerant of any exposure. It is, moreover, a useful coppice wood for poles, hoops, etc., and its bark is used to some extent in tanning.

The alternately arranged ascending branches, springing, as has been said, in a lax manner from the trunk, give to the tree an air of negligent grace and lightness, which is enhanced by the coloring and form of bark, leaf, blossom, and fruit. The leaves are what is known as "pinnate," being, as a whole, some six or eight inches in length, but made up of from thirteen to seventeen leaflets, i.e., one terminal one, and from twelve to sixteen in pairs. Each leaflet is from one to two inches in length, and about one-third as broad, with a coarsely-toothed margin and an acute point. They are at first downy on their under surfaces, and though they lose this character as they mature, they remain, like most leaves, paler on that side, and are fringed with hairs along their chief veins. When the foliage is newly expanded in May, and the gracefully cut, bright green leaflets turn in the breeze, exhibiting their pallid lower surfaces, they certainly form a distinct charm in themselves, apart from the contrasting ashen bark and the creamy clusters of blossom that appear at this period.

The individual flowers are very small, only one-third of an inch across, but they are crowded into a nearly flat or "corymbose cyme," generally nearly six inches across, so that they gain by being massed together the conspicuousness that they do not separately possess. Though the tree has but few insect foes, this massing together of its little honeyed florets procures for it many friendly insect visitants, nearly fifty species having been observed upon its blossoms. These visits are apparently to a great extent necessary- to the setting of seed, since the stigmas of the flowers become sticky, i.e., reach their maturity, before the stamens are ready to shed their pollen; so that no one flower can be fertilised by its own pollen. Other plants with numerous small flowers render them conspicuous in different ways, the Guelder Rose, for instance, by the great enlargement of the corollas of the outer neuter florets; but the Mountain Ash, like the Elder, depends entirely upon the broad expanse of the whole cluster.

It is, however, undoubtedly after these blossoms have fallen in June or July, when the little hawthorn-like fruits or miniature apples have, in August and September, turned from unnoticed greenness to a remarkable shade of scarlet, that the graces of the Rowan force themselves upon our notice. Then, as Wordsworth says--

"The Mountain Ash
No eye can overlook when, 'mid a grove
Of yet unfaded trees, she lifts her head,
Deck'd with autumnal berries that outshine
Spring's richest blossoms."

The poet here notices the fact--an important one from the point of view of picturesque effects in form and color--that the berries of the Mountain Ash turn color, whilst most of our forest trees still retain their foliage in its summer green. Their hue is not the blood-red of the Guelder Rose, nor the crimson often seen in the haws of the Whitethorn, but a less common tint containing a considerable admixture of yellow, a scarlet sometimes matched in the hips of the Rose. If permitted to do so, the berries will stay on the tree until the leaves have changed color and fallen; but though the not unwholesome acid fruits are not now much molested by man, they are peculiar favorites with the birds, so much so that Virgil speaks of the tree as attracting thrushes to any grove in which it grew. The flesh of the fruit is of a bright orange-yellow, as may often be seen in the many wounds the beaks of innumerable finches and thrushes will make in the riddled clusters, whilst the core is so hard as to connect the species, as has been said, with the Medlar and the Hawthorn.

The leaves, in turning, most frequently become yellowish, and decay on the tree to an unornamental brown; but in exceptional situations, or in very favorable autumns--perhaps mostly when the end of September and beginning of October are unusually dry--they, too, become red, and then, as a poetess has said--

"The scarlet Rowan seems to mock
The red sea-coral--berries, leaves, and all
Light swinging from the moist, green, shining rock,
Which beds the foaming torrent's turbid fall."

The writer has here happily suggested an appropriate situation for the tree. It likes a moist but not a marshy soil, and, if well drained, cares little whether it be sandstone or calcareous. Its light and graceful habit should be sufficiently free from other trees to be well seen; indeed, hardy as it is for any exposure, its outline of branch and leaf will show well against the sky: the grey bark will contrast well either with the lush green growth by the stream, or with the changing tints of moorland, bracken, and heather; and the gay verdure of the young leaves and the creamy flowers, or the bright autumn fruit, will harmonize equally with the severity of bare stone in the browns or grays of the natural rockery. In such spots, in planting for picturesque effect, should the Mountain Ash be placed, in company with Guelder Rose or Silver Birch.

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