A kind of tree magic

When it comes to driving away witches or warding off evil, nothing beats the rowan tree, with its gleaming scarlet berries and pentagram markings. Aeneas Dennison walks into a forest of myths

- By Aeneas Dennison

IT is strange to think that, for centuries, something so seemingly ordinary and so apparently inanimate as a tree could captivate people across the world and embody the hopes and fears of diverse cultures. Yet that is precisely what has happened with the humble rowan, a tree so steeped in folklore and legend that it is hard to think of it as simply a thing of Nature. From driving back witches to saving gods from certain death, it has been no mere plant, but a symbol of safety and agent of protection.

Across the British Isles, the rowan's association with magic is as old as our most ancient legends. The old Celtic name for it, fid nandruad, means 'the wizard's tree' and one of its common English names is 'witchwood', a link that probably derives from its fruit. Every autumn, rowans produce clusters of gleaming scarlet berries, redder and more vibrant than a maiden's blushing cheeks. Each one bears a pentagram. In folklore, these five-pointed stars were believed to ward off evil. Traditionally, red was considered the colour best suited to repelling witches and the pentagram, a magic sigil, offered security to honest folk-perhaps the rowan was always intended for more than fruit for birds and beasts or lining supermarket car parks and golf courses.

People certainly believed that in medieval Ireland, where the trees were planted outside houses to protect against evil spirits; their flair for repelling the supernatural is also why they were grown in or near churchyards, particularly in Wales. In Scotland, rowans thrive in the wilds of the Highlands, often at altitudes too great for other British trees. Emerging from clefts in rocky hillsides, they acquired the name 'mountain ash' on account of their habitat and a similarity of leaf structure between the two trees, although the ash is, in fact, a different and unrelated species.