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Sorbus aucuparia

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Sorbus aucuparia
A roadside tree with fruit in Ireland
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Plantae
(unranked):
Angiosperms
(unranked):
Eudicots
(unranked):
Rosids
Order:
Rosales
Family:
Rosaceae
Genus:
Sorbus
Subgenus:
Sorbus
Section:
Sorbus
Species:
S. aucuparia
Binomial name
Sorbus aucuparia

Sorbus aucuparia is a species of deciduous tree or shrub in the rose family. The plant is native to most of Europe as well as Northern Russia and can be found in woods, shrubland, and in mountain regions up to the tree line.

S. aucuparia has a slender trunk with smooth bark, a loose and roundish crown, and its leaves are pinnate in pairs of leaflets on a central vein with a terminal leaflet. It blossoms from May to June in dense corymbs of small yellowish white flowers and develops small red pomes as fruit that ripen from August to October and are eaten by many bird species. The plant is undemanding and frost hardy and colonizes disrupted and inaccessible places as a short-lived pioneer species.

Fruit and foliage of S. aucuparia have been used by humans in the creation of dishes and beverages, as a folk medicine, and as fodder for livestock. Its tough and flexible wood has traditionally been used for woodworking. It is planted to fortify soil in mountain regions or as an ornamental tree and has several cultivars.

Names

The binomial name Sorbus aucuparia is composed of the Latin words sorbus for service tree and aucuparia, which derives from the words avis for "bird" and capere for "catching" and describes the use fruit of S. aucuparia as bait for fowling.[1] The plant is commonly known in English as rowan and mountain-ash,[2] and has also been called rowan berry, European mountain-ash, or quickbeam.[3] The species is unrelated to the true ash trees (genus Fraxinus), which also carry pinnate leaves.[4] S. aucuparia was previously categorized as Pyrus aucuparia.[5] The author citation Sorbus aucuparia L. belongs to Carl Linnaeus.

Description

Sorbus aucuparia occurs as a tree or shrub that grows up to between 5 and 15 meters in height.[6] The crown is loose and roundish or irregularly shaped but wide and the plant often grows multiple trunks.[7][8] A trunk is slender and cylindrical and reaches up to 40 centimeters in diameter, and the branches stick out and are slanted upwards.[1] The bark of a young S. aucuparia is yellowish gray and gleaming and becomes gray-black with lengthwise cracks in advanced age; it descales in small flakes.[2][8] Lenticels in the bark are elongated and colored a bright ocher.[9] The plant does not often grow older than 80 years and is one of the shortest-lived trees in temperate climate.[8][10] Wood of S. aucuparia has a wide reddish white sapwood and a light brown to reddish brown heartwood. It is diffuse-porous, flexible, elastic, and tough, but not durable, with a density of 600 to 700 Template:Val/units in a dried state.[2] The roots of S. aucuparia grow wide and deep, and the plant is capable of root sprout and can regenerate after coppicing.[1]

The compound leaves are pinnate with 4 to 9 pairs of leaflets on either side of a terete central vein and with a terminal leaflet.[2] They are up to 20 centimeters long, 8 to 12 centimeters wide, and arranged in an alternate leaf pattern on a branch.[1] The leaflets are elongated-lanceolate in shape, 2 to 6 centimeters long, and 1 to 2.5 centimeters wide with a sharply serrated edge, and have short stems or sit close to the central vein except for the outermost leaflet.[11] Leaflets are covered in gray-silvery hairs after sprouting but become mostly bare after they unfold.[12] Their uppers side is dark green and their underside is a grayish green and felted. Young leaflets smell like marzipan when brayed.[12][13] The leaflets are asymmetrical at the bottom.[8] S. aucuparia foliage grows in May and turns yellow in autumn or a dark red in dry locations.[1][14]

Buds of S. aucuparia are often longer than 1 centimeter and have flossy to felted hairs.[8] These hairs, which disappear over time, cover dark brown to black bud scales.[15] The terminal buds are oval and pointed and larger than axillary buds, which are narrow, oval and pointed, close to the twig, and often curved towards it.[9][15]

Many small open cream colored flowers in a bulging corymb.
Inflorescensce of Sorbus aucuparia

S. aucuparia is monoicous.[13] It reaches maturity at age 10 and carries ample fruit almost every year.[1] The plant flowers from May to June (on occasion again in September) in many yellowish white corymbs that contain about 250 flowers.[7][16][17] The corymbs are large, upright, and bulging.[18] The flowers are between 4 and 7 millimeters in diameter and have five small, yellowish green, and triangular sepals that are covered in hairs or bare.[2] The five round or oval petals are yellowish white and the flower has up to 20 stamens and an ovary with two to four styles; the style is fused with the receptacle.[2][18] Flowers of S. aucuparia have an unpleasant trimethylamine smell.[13] Their nectar is high in fructose and glucose.[17]

It carries round pomes between 8 and 10 millimeters in size as fruit; they ripen from August to October.[13] The fruit are yellow before they ripen and then turn orange to scarlet in color; they have remnant sepals at the crest.[1][19] A corymb carries 80 to 100 pomes.[20] A pome contains two to five cells with one or two flat, narrow, and pointed reddish seeds.[2][17] The flesh of the fruit contains carotenoids, citric acid, malic acid, parasorbic acid, pectin, provitamin A, sorbitol, tannin, and vitamin C.[21] The seeds contain glycoside.[22]

S. aucuparia has a chromosome number of 2n=34.[23]

Distribution and habitat

Sorbus aucuparia growing with Mountain Pine in the Italian Alps

Sorbus aucuparia is found in five subspecies:[17][24]

  • Sorbus aucuparia subsp. aucuparia: found in most of the species' range, less in the South
  • Sorbus aucuparia subsp. fenenkiana (Georgiev & Stoj.): has thin, sparsely hairy leaflets and depressed-globose fruit, restricted to Bulgaria
  • Sorbus aucuparia subsp. glabrata (Wimm. & Grab.): less hairy, found in Northern Europe and Central European mountains
  • Sorbus aucuparia subsp. praemorsa (Guss.): has hairy leaflets and ovoid fruit, found in Southern Italy, Sicily, and Corsica
  • Sorbus aucuparia subsp. sibirica (Hedl.): nearly hairless, found in Northern Russia

It can be found in almost all of Europe and the Caucasus up to Northern Russia and Siberia, but it is not native to Southern Spain, Southern Greece, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, the Azores, and the Faroe Islands.[24][25] The species was introduced as an ornamental species in North America.[24] It is widespead from plains to mountains up to the tree line where it grows as the only deciduous tree species among krummholz.[1] In the Alps it grows in heights of up to 2000 meters.[7] S. aucuparia appears north of the boreal forest at the arctic tree line; in Norway, it is found up to the 71st parallel north.[2][24]

S. aucuparia is an undemanding species and can withstand shade.[2] It is frost hardy and can tolerate winter dryness and a brief growing season.[26] The plant is also resistant to air pollution, wind, and snow pressure.[27][28] S. aucuparia mostly grows on soil that is moderately dry to moderately damp, acidic, low on nutrients, sandy, and loose.[15] It often grows in stony soil or clay soil, but also sandy soil or wet peat.[1] The plant grows best on fresh, loose, and fertile soil, prefers average humidity, and does not tolerate saline soil or waterlogging.[2][15][29] It can be found in light woodland of all kinds and as a pioneer species over fallen dead trees or in clearcuttings, and at the edge of forests or at the sides of roads.[1] Seeds of S. aucuparia germinate easily, so the plant may appear on inaccessible rock, ruins, branch forks, or on hollow or prunes trees.[1]

The tallest S. aucuparia in the United Kingdom stands in the Chiltern Hills in South East England. This exceptional specimen is 28 meters tall and has a trunk diameter of 56 centimeters.[30] In Germany, an unusually large specimen is located near Wendisch Waren, a village in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. This tree stands at more than 15 meters tall, is around 100 years old, and has a diameter of 70 centimeters.[31] The tallest known S. aucuparia in Ireland is an 18 meters tall specimen at Glenstal Abbey, County Limerick.[32]

Ecology

Damage caused by game

S. aucuparia is pollinated by bees and flies.[13] Its seeds are not digested by birds and thus propagated.[33] The fruit are eaten by 63 bird species and several mammals.[34] They are liked particularly by thrushes and other songbirds, and are also eaten by cloven-hoofed game, red fox, European badger, dormouse, and squirrel.[16][19] Fruit of S. aucuparia are used as a food source by migratory birds in winter, including Bohemian Waxwing, Spotted Nutcracker, and Redwing.[14] Cloven-hoofed game also excessively browse foliage and bark.[1] The plant roots can be found in symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal and ectomycorrhizal fungi.[23][26]

The plant grows fast and suppresses other bushes or shrubs, allowing trees to grow back in its shelter.[2] It is usually later superseded by larger forest trees.[35] It often grows in association with Red Elderberry, goat willow, Eurasian aspen, and silver birch.[35] In high altitudes S. aucuparia is often festooned with lichens.[36] The plant is highly flammable and tends not to accumulate plant litter.[26][37]

Other species of the genus Sorbus easily hybridize with S. aucuparia and hybrid speciation can result; hybrids include Sorbus × hybrida, a small tree with oval serrated leaves and 2 to 3 pairs of leaflets, which is a hybrid with Sorbus × intermedia, and Sorbus thuringiaca, a medium-size tree with elongated leaves and 1 to 3 pairs of leaflets that are sometimes fused at the central vein, which is a hybrid with Sorbus aria.[38]

The main pests for S. aucuparia are the apple fruit moth Argyresthia conjugella and the mountain-ash sawfly Pristiphora geniculata.[39] The rust fungus Gymnosporangium cornutum produces leaf galls.[40] The leaves are not palatable to insects, but are used by insect larvae, including by the moth Venusia cambrica, the case-bearer moth Coleophora anatipennella, and leaf miners of the genus Stigmella. The snail Helix aspersa feeds on the leaves.[40] The plant can suffer from fire blight.[41]

Usage

Fruit of S. aucuparia were used in the past to lure and catch birds. To humans, the fruit are bitter, astringent, laxative, diuretic, cholagogue, prevent scurvy, and the parasorbic acid irritates the gastric mucosa.[19][29] Pharmacist Mannfried Pahlow wrote that he doubted the toxicity of the fruit but advised against consuming large amounts.[42] The fruit contain sorbitol, which can be used as a sugar substitute by diabetics, but its production is no longer relevant.[43] Fruit can be debittered and made into compote, jelly, jam, a tangy syrup, a tart chutney, or juice, as well as wine and liqueur, or used for tea or to make flour.[19][44][45] Fruit are served as a side dish to lamb or game.[28] Debittering can be accomplished by freezing, cooking, or drying, which degrades the parasorbic acid.[42][45] The fruit are red colored in August but usually only harvested in October after the first frost by cutting the corymbs.[21][46] The robust qualities of S. aucuparia make it a source for fruit in harsh mountain climate and Maria Theresa of the Habsburg Monarchy recommended the planting of the species in 1779.[28]

Fruit and leaves of Sorbus aucuparia var. edulis

The edible variety, named Sorbus aucuparia var. dulcis Kraetzl, or var. edulis Dieck, or var. moravica Dippel,[39] was first discovered in 1810 near Ostružná in the Hrubý Jeseník mountain range of the Austrian Empire.[28] Only the front part of the leaflets is serrated in edible cultivars.[25] Two widespread cultivars are 'Konzentra' and 'Rosina', which were selected from specimen found in 1946 by the Institut für Gartenbau Dresden-Pillnitz, an agricultural research institute in Saxony, and made available in 1954.[39][47] Fruit of the more widely used 'Konzentra' are small to medium-sized, mildly aromatic and tartly, transportable and used for juicing, while fruit of 'Rosina' are larger, sweet and tartly, and aromatic, and candied or used in compote.[39][47] Edible S. aucuparia is self-pollinating, yields fruit early, and the sugar content increases while the acid content decreases as the fruit ripen.[48]

The leaves were fermented with leaves of sweet gale and oak bark to create herb beer.[43] Fruit are eaten as a mash in small amounts against lack of appetite or an upset stomach and stimulate production of gastric acid.[42] In folk medicine they are used as a laxative, against rheumatism and kidney disease, and as a gargled juice against hoarseness.[22]

Wood of S. aucuparia is used for cartwright's work, turner's work, and woodcarving.[1] Wood can be used from trees as young as 20 years.[35] In almost treeless regions it is used as firewood.[5] The leaves are sometimes used as fodder for livestock while the fruit are used against erysipeloid infections in domestic pigs and goats.[2] Bark of the plant was used to dye wool brown or red.[43]

S. aucuparia is planted in mountain ranges to fortify landslides and avalanche zones.[35] It is are also used as an ornamental plant in parks, gardens, or as an avenue tree.[16] Ornamental cultivars include 'Asplenifolia', which has divided and sharply serrated leaflets, 'Beissneri', which has a copper brown trunk and yellowish leaves and fruit, 'Blackhawk', which has large fruit and dark green foliage, 'Fastigiata', which has an upright columnar form, 'Fructu Luteo', which has orange yellow fruit, 'Michred', which has brilliant red fruit, 'Pendula', which is a weeping tree, 'Rossica Major', which has large fruit, 'Sheerwater Seedling', which is upright and slender, and 'Xanthocarpa', which has orange yellow fruit.[41][49][50] Cultivars are vegetatively propagated via cuttings, grafting, or shield budding.[49]

Mythology and customs

In the Prose Edda, the Norse god Thor saves himself from a rapid river created by the giantess Gjálp by grabbing hold of a rowan, which became known as "Thor's protection".[51] Twigs of S. aucuparia were believed to ward off evil spirits.[19] The plant was called "the witch" in England and dowsing rods to find ores were made out of its wood.[43] Twigs of S. aucuparia were used to drive cattle to the pasture for the first time in Spring for health and fertility.[52] In weather lore, a year with plentiful fruit would have a good grain harvest but be followed by a severe winter.[19]

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Erlbeck, Haseder, Stinglwagner 1998, p. 166
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Godet 1994, p. 52
  3. ^ "Sorbus aucuparia information from NPGS/GRIN". Germplasm Resources Information Network. Archived from the original on 7 April 2013. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  4. ^ Breckwoldt 2011, p. 152
  5. ^ a b Hora 1993, p. 184
  6. ^ Schauer 2001, p. 342
  7. ^ a b c Zauner 2000, p. 52
  8. ^ a b c d e Harz 2009, p. 72
  9. ^ a b Godet 2008, p. 110
  10. ^ Laudert 1999, p. 57
  11. ^ Godet 1994, p. 138
  12. ^ a b Reichholf, Steinbach 1992, p. 103
  13. ^ a b c d e Hecker 1995, p. 130
  14. ^ a b Smolik 1996, p. 63
  15. ^ a b c d Godet 2008, p. 378
  16. ^ a b c Kremer 2010, p. 42
  17. ^ a b c d Raspé, Findlay, Jacquemart 2000, p. 910
  18. ^ a b Godet 1998, p. 68
  19. ^ a b c d e f Erlbeck, Haseder, Stinglwagner 1998, p. 167
  20. ^ Garcke 1972, p. 722
  21. ^ a b Breckwoldt 2011, p. 153
  22. ^ a b Hensel 2007, p. 112
  23. ^ a b Raspé, Findlay, Jacquemart 2000, p. 916
  24. ^ a b c d Raspé, Findlay, Jacquemart 2000, p. 911
  25. ^ a b Větvička 1995, p. 200
  26. ^ a b c Raspé, Findlay, Jacquemart 2000, p. 915
  27. ^ Laudert 1999, p. 80
  28. ^ a b c d Laudert 1999, p. 83
  29. ^ a b Aichele, Golte-Bechtle 1997, p. 78
  30. ^ "Record Rowan". Chilterns Conservation Board. Archived from the original on 7 April 2013. Retrieved 7 April 2013.
  31. ^ Ullrich, Kühn, Kühn 2009, p. 29
  32. ^ "Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia L.)" (PDF). Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. 2001.
  33. ^ Lohmann 2005, p. 60
  34. ^ Laudert 1999, p. 81
  35. ^ a b c d Lohmann 2005, p. 61
  36. ^ Smolik 1996, p. 64
  37. ^ Raspé, Findlay, Jacquemart 2000, p. 913
  38. ^ Hora 1993, p. 185–186
  39. ^ a b c d Friedrich, Petzold 2005, p. 554
  40. ^ a b Alan Watson Featherstone (8 November 2010). "Trees for Life - Rowan Species Profile". Trees for Life. Archived from the original on 26 April 2013. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  41. ^ a b Flint 1997, p. 641
  42. ^ a b c Pahlow 1993, p. 106
  43. ^ a b c d Laudert 1999, p. 84
  44. ^ Henschel 2002, p. 220
  45. ^ a b Dreyer 2009, p. 108
  46. ^ Pahlow 1993, p. 105
  47. ^ a b Friedrich, Petzold 2005, p. 556
  48. ^ Fischer 1995, p. 213
  49. ^ a b Enzyklopädie der Garten- und Zimmerpflanzen 1994, p. 572
  50. ^ Paul, Rees 1990, p. 141
  51. ^ McTurk 1997, p. 205
  52. ^ Scherf 2006, p. 58

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