Sorbus, Sorbe, Sorbum

WHEN I was young and poor, I grew a lot of sorbus from seed. I should explain that sorbus means mountain ash or rowan, although Ive never understood why we have two names to describe the same tree. Perhaps rowans are Scottish? S. aucuparia is our native species and I remember short, gnarled specimens around the grouse moors of my youth; the gleaming clusters of orange-scarlet berries never failed to raise my spirits on the Glorious Twelfth.

- Charles Quest-Ritson

It’s easy to grow from seed, gets away quickly and flourishes in every soil—heavy or light, damp or dry, chalk, sand or clay. Actually, that’s not entirely true—it does sometimes complain when grown on light soils in hot summers like this year’s. It’s worth knowing that there’s a highly desirable form with copper-coloured bark that glows in the winter sunshine called Beissneri, but it has to be grafted and bought as a readyto-plant tree, so I didn’t acquire it until I was older and richer.

There are hundreds of Sorbus species—botanists split them into six groups. The most numerous are aucuparias and arias. The aucuparias are proper mountain ashes, with long pinnate leaves and, usually, good autumn colour as well as clusters of berries. They make excellent trees for small gardens. The arias are what we call the whitebeams and tend to have simple greyish leaves and larger, not-so-colourful berries.

They’re much loved by urban landscapers—you often see them in supermarket carparks.

It’s hard to believe that the two types belong to the same genus, except that they do occasionally hybridise.