Rowan

The rowans ( or ) 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 Himalaya, southern Tibet and parts of western China, where numerous apomictic microspecies occur.Rushforth, K. (1999). ''Trees of Britain and Europe''. Collins . 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 '' S. domestica'', for example, has largely vanished from Britain, where it was traditionally appreciated. Natural hybrids, often including ''S. aucuparia'' and the whitebeam, ''Sorbus aria'', give rise to many endemic variants in the UK.

Names

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 often thought to be from a North Germanic source, perhaps related to 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 tree has two names in Welsh ''Cerdinen'' and ''criafol''. Criafol may be translated as "The Lamenting Fruit", likely derived from the Welsh tradition that the Cross of Christ was carved from the wood of this tree, and the subsequent association of the Rowan's red fruit with the blood of Christ.

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.

The more common Scots Gaelic name is caorunn () which appears in numerous Highland place names such as Beinn Chaorunn in Inverness-shire and Loch a’chaorun in Easter Ross. Rowan was also the clan badge of the Malcolms and McLachlans. There were strong taboos in the Highlands against the use of any parts of the tree save the berries, except for ritual purposes. For example, a Gaelic threshing tool made of rowan and called a buaitean was used on grain meant for rituals and celebrations.

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)''.

Botany

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