Tree of the Week

Week 14 – Sorbus aucuparia; Rowan, Mountain Ash

Fresh in to flower now, with rounded white flower heads about the size of your hand but made up of many tiny flowers. They have red berries in Autumn, which are valuable for birds. In a cold winter they will have some Autumn leaf colour too. Useful because of their tolerance of cold winds, small size (usually about 10m) and the fact that they tolerate light, poor soils and dry conditions. The leaves are quite distinctive and a good way to check your identification – they are composite (made up of many small leaflets) with the tooth-edged leaflets held in opposite pairs along the central twig. Other Rowan species and S. Aucuparia varieties are available, with orange, pink, white or yellow berries.

n.b. a close competitor for tree of the week this week was copper beech, their leaves are so newly out that they are green/pink/red all at once and look amazing in Manchester at the time of writing. Copper beech is of course not its proper name, find out why here.