Plant Guide > Trees > Mountain Ashes

Mountain Ashes

Mountain AshesFAMILY ROSACEAE

Genus SORBUS, Linn.

Small trees of good habit, with ornamental foliage, flowers and fruit. Leaves alternate, 7 to 17 leaflets, serrate. Flowers small, white, in many-flowered flat corymbs. fruit small, red, berry-like.

The handsome foliage and showy clusters of flowers and fruits make this a favourite genus of trees and shrubs for ornamental planting. There are about thirty species of Sorbus, widely distributed over the Northern Hemisphere and chiefly inhabitants of mountain slopes.

Their contentment with poor soil and exposed situations make them valuable for the covering of broken ground, where they show to the best advantage. In autumn the red berries are matched by the ruddy foliage. Birds often depend on the berries for food in snowy winters. On a lawn a mountain ash is a neat and very decorative little tree at all seasons.

Elder Leaved Mountain Ash Tree
Mountain Ash Tree
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