The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Shrubs And Trees
The European Mountain-Ash or Rowan-tree, Sorbus Aucuparia, is a popular and decorative tree of quite suitable ultimate proportions, with a densely branched, oval crown to about 35 or 40 feet high. Its principal decorative quality is the orange-red, clustered fruit which ripens about September 1st and continues effective for a long while, remaining well into the winter in a blackened, shrivelled condition, when it stands the birds in good stead.
An attractive tree with pinnate leaves and broad clusters of creamy-white flowers in May, somewhat suggestive in effect of Hawthorn; with an odor which is hardly pleasant at close range but rather agreeable diffused at some distance. The trunk and branches are bronze-colored.
It grows readily and rapidly in any garden soil of fair quality, well drained and not too dry, and is easily transplanted, bare-rooted in grades up to about 2 1/2 inches in caliper.
Its great disadvantage is a susceptibility to attack by borers, which work mostly in the lower part of the trunk and, while they do not always kill the tree outright, so weaken it that a high wind may snap it off easily.
This trouble is so widely spread that it is difficult to keep the borers out. When their presence is detected, one may kill the larvae in the usual manner, by probing for them with wire. Or one may poke a wad of cotton, soaked in a disinfectant, like a strong solution of Blackleaf 40, into the opening and plug it with any suitable kind of paste or putty. We have seen borers kept out by means of a protective paint, applied all over the trunk, made up of a solution of one lb. of paradichloro-benzene crystals in a gallon of boiled linseed oil. This must be prepared sometime in advance, since the crystals dissolve only very slowly. It makes a sticky paint, which will stain clothing when it comes into contact with treated trees, so that a guard must be provided.
Except for this borer trouble, the Rowan-tree is one of the most useful and decorative trees for small places, even though its effect is somewhat exotic. In a rich soil it will make a rapid growth, which may tend to lessen the danger of borers but also keep the tree from flowering and fruiting at an early stage.
Less showy and less satisfactory is Sorbus hybrida, the Oakleaved Mountain-Ash, in which the leaves are not pinnate but merely lobed in a manner faintly suggestive of Oak leaves. It bears smaller clusters of orange-red berries.
The native S. americana, much like the European in leaf and fruit, is much less amenable to cultivation in average soils and particularly in dryish places.
