Rowan

The rowans (/ˈroʊənz/) or mountain-ashes are shrubs or trees in the genus Sorbus of the rose family, Rosaceae. They are native throughout the cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the highest species diversity in the mountains of western China and the Himalaya, where numerous apomictic microspecies occur. The name rowan was originally applied to the species Sorbus aucuparia and is also used for other species in Sorbus subgenus Sorbus. Formerly, when a wider variety of fruits were commonly eaten in Europe and North America, Sorbus was a domestically used fruit throughout these regions. It is still used in some countries, but Sorbus domestica, for example, has largely vanished from Britain, where it was traditionally appreciated. Natural hybrids, often including Sorbus aucuparia and the whitebeam, Sorbus aria, give rise to many endemic variants in the UK. The traditional names of the rowan are those applied to the species Sorbus aucuparia, Sorbus torminalis (wild service-tree), and Sorbus domestica (true service-tree).The Latin name sorbus was borrowed into Old English as syrfe. The name 'service-tree' for Sorbus domestica is derived from that name by folk etymology.The Latin name sorbus is from a root for 'red, reddish-brown' (PIE *sor-/*ser-); English sorb is attested from the 1520s in the sense 'fruit of the service tree', adopted via French sorbe from Latin sorbum 'service-berry'.Sorbus domestica is also known as 'whitty pear', the adjective whitty meaning 'pinnate'. The name 'mountain-ash' for Sorbus domestica is due to a superficial similarity of the rowan leaves to those of the ash, not to be confused with Fraxinus ornus, a true ash that is also known as 'mountain ash'. Sorbus torminalis is also known as 'chequer tree'; its fruits, formerly used to flavour beer, are called 'chequers', perhaps from the spotted pattern of the fruit. The name 'rowan' is recorded from 1804, detached from an earlier rowan-tree, rountree, attested from the 1540s in northern dialects of English and Scots. It is from a North Germanic source, derived from Old Norse reynir (c.f. Norwegian rogn, Danish røn, Swedish rönn), ultimately from the Germanic verb *raud-inan 'to redden', in reference to the berries (as is the Latin name sorbus). Various dialectal variants of rowan are found in English, including ran, roan, rodan, royan, royne, round, and rune. The Old English name of the rowan is cwic-beám, which survives in the name quickbeam (also quicken, quicken-tree, and variants). This name by the 19th century was reinterpreted as connected to the word witch, from a dialectal variant wick for quick and names such as wicken-tree, wich-tree, wicky, and wiggan-tree, giving rise to names such as witch-hazel and witch-tree. The Old Irish name is cairtheand, reflected in Modern Irish caorthann. The 'arboreal' Bríatharogam in the Book of Ballymote associates the rowan with the letter luis, with the gloss 'delightful to the eye (li sula) is luis, i.e. rowan (caertheand), owing to the beauty of its berries'. Due to this, 'delight of the eye' (vel sim.) has been reported as a 'name of the rowan' by some commentators. In the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, this species is commonly referred to as a 'dogberry' tree. In German, Sorbus aucuparia is known as the Vogelbeerbaum ('bird-berry tree') or as Eberesche. The latter is a compound of the name of the ash tree (Esche) with what is contemporarily the name of the boar (Eber), but in fact the continuation of a Gaulish name, eburo- (also the name for a dark reddish-brown colour, cognate with Greek orphnos, Old Norse iarpr 'brown'); like sorbus, eburo- seems to have referred to the colour of the berries; it is also recorded as a Gaulish name for the yew (which also has red berries), see also Eburodunum (disambiguation). The Welsh name criafol refers to the tree as 'lamenting fruit', associating the red fruit with the blood of Christ, as Welsh tradition believed the Cross was carved from the wood of this tree. Rowans are mostly small deciduous trees 10–20 m tall, though a few are shrubs. Rowans are unrelated to the true ash trees of the genus Fraxinus, family Oleaceae. Though their leaves are superficially similar, those of Sorbus are alternate, while those of Fraxinus are opposite.:388 Rowan leaves are arranged alternately, and are pinnate, with (7–)11–35 leaflets. A terminal leaflet is always present. The flowers are borne in dense corymbs; each flower is creamy white, and 5–10 mm across with five petals. The fruit is a small pome 4–8 mm diameter, bright orange or red in most species, but pink, yellow or white in some Asian species. The fruit are soft and juicy, which makes them a very good food for birds, particularly waxwings and thrushes, which then distribute the rowan seeds in their droppings. Due to their small size the fruits are often referred to as berries, but a true berry is a simple fruit produced from a single ovary, whereas a pome is an accessory fruit.