Looking for a Rowan tree for my garden. Does anybody know where I could buy it in Lower Mainland? (I live in PoCo) Thank you!
Should be easily available. Best to chose one of your local native rowans like Sorbus sitchensis, rather than the European Rowan S. aucuparia, which is invasive in BC.
Local nursery have the tree I need but it is too mature for me (higher than 8 feet already), I won't be able to plant it among the established plants in my garden. One more nursery replied to my request with the same result - higher than 8 feet. And of course they won't tell me where they get the trees and probably even if they will, the grower won't sell the younger tree to me. I wonder how many years it may take to grow this tree from seeds - I read about this method on the Internet...
Sorbus aucuparia grows very fast and the seeds germinate freely. I don't have personal experience with S. sitchensis but expect the same may apply. You would have to scatter the berries on the ground as soon as they are ripe and cover only ever so lightly with the soil for protection from birds. In spring you will have a little forest of saplings. Or sow just a few berries where you would like the tree to grow and mark the spot to remember. When the saplings are big enough to see which one is the strongest choose that one to keep and cut down the others. This easiness of germination I think is what makes S. aucuparia invasive in some areas. I love the trees. Here where I live their chances of survival after the germination are next to none, so they are not invasive here.
Down here the Sorbus aucuparia that are very commonly seen in plantings east of the mountains look better than the ones on the rainy side. Tree is very hardy, what makes you think it will be unlikely to survive where you are? In my area S. aucuparia seedlings come up in numbers. One year a native plant dealer here was offering seedlings of S. aucuparia grown from a plant east of the mountains as one of the native species, which he insisted they had to be because the parent tree was growing wild.
To Sundrop: Will try to collect the seeds before the birds this fall. Thank you for encouraging me :) To Ron_B: I often go to Bellingham, WA, for shopping. Maybe I should try US plant dealers (though I have no idea who they are in Bellingham) if they do sell seedlings of S.aucuparia.
Observation. Despite of easiness of germination I have seen only a very few S. aucuparia trees in the West Kootenays. May be I could see more if I looked for them on purpose, I can't say. What I can easily see is that all those that germinate on my property die because of too much shade (under the other trees) or too much sun, heat and drought otherwise. Those that survive a little longer are being eaten by deer and elk. Only those taken care of survive.
Just purchased Sorbus aucuparia "Red Cascade". Never seen deer in the area, but bears can be a problem. Maybe I should stake it, just in case...
This is what the labels on the tree read. Product of Canada too. However, the grower might intentionally omit "Americana" for patriotic reasons :)
There is a lot of mislabeling. Recently I purchased something called Vaccinium myrtillus 'Tophat'. I have been looking for Vaccinium myrtillus for a very long time already, so, despite that somewhere on the intuitive level I didn't like the combination of 'Tophat' and Vaccinium myrtillus I bought it anyhow, only to discover through the Net that the cultivar 'Tophat' has nothing to do with Vaccinium myrtillus.
My tree is looking like some mountain ash and it is compact, proper leave shape, blossoms and berries that I hope will turn orange or red later. I am not sure about one thing - which color the foliage will turn in the fall :)
Red Cascade is a trademark used to sell Sorbus americana 'Dwarfcrown'. S. aucuparia produces different leaves and buds etc. The other is a form of Vaccinium corymbosum, that also exhibits parts characteristic of that species, and not like those of V. myrtillus. http://www.jfschmidt.com/introductions/redcascade/index.html
"mountain ash" is an archaic name that has sometimes been misapplied to Rowan (it isn't an ash Fraxinus at all).
I am from Russia. First, I wanted to plant a birch in my garden (for nostalgic reason), but birches they sell here look different from what I would like to have (white trunk with black lines on it); they told me that European birch is weevil bugs susceptible. Next tree in my nostalgic list is Rowan. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Рябина Looking at my neigbor's tree, I decided that the trees that they call mountain ashes here is what I need. I am not a pro and never did any research and know no difference between rowans, ashes and mountain ashes, etc. :)))))) The article in Wikipedia reads that mountain ash and Rowan tree is the same. Looking at the pictures of Fraxinus on the web, I definitely can say that this is not what I ever wanted :))) Probably I misunderstood what you meant by your message (English is not my first language).
The tree you are looking for is Sorbus aucuparia commonly known as Rowan (in England) or Mountain Ash (in America). Michael, being form Britain prefers the use of common name Rowan, here however the common name Mountain Ash is much more prevalent. It looks like what you have bought is a Rowan, but the cultivar name "Red Cascade" is causing some confusion whether it is indeed native to Europe Sorbus aucuparia or a slightly different Sorbus species Sorbus americana, native to eastern North America. If you could post some pictures of the tree (leaves, branches) most likely it would be easily identified to species by our experts.
The cultivar is 'Dwarfcrown'. Red Cascade is a trademark used to sell the cultivar 'Dwarfcrown'. Neither name applies to an example of Sorbus aucuparia.
In Europe - it is called Rowan, or similar cognate words, in most European languages. But incorrectly, as that is a false statement that it is a species of Fraxinus.
To Sundrop: sure, will post pictures in a few hours, thank you for the advice! To Ron_B: The label indicates that this is Sorbus aucuparia. If you are right, and this is not aucuparia, then I may just hope that this "Dwarfcrown" will look nice in autumn :((( I cannot find any pictures of a "dwarfcrown" ash on the Internet and any "red cascade" pictures neither... Found some pics of other cascades, and fortunately my tree does nook like them :)))
Leaves and racemes of my tree look exactly like in this pic. BTW, In Russian the common name sounds like "Ryabina".
Just uploaded a few pics of the tree: http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?p=328260#post328260 Also asking for help with another plant: http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?p=328259#post328259
I posted a link to the introducing nursery's color illustrated pages on 'Dwarfcrown' to this thread yesterday at 11:03 AM. As I also related earlier, S. americana and S. aucuparia look differently from one another, it should be possible to determine which a given specimen is by the appearance of the leaves - for starters. Probably somebody along the way thought "americana" was a mistake for "aucuparia" and produced an erroneous label, or they were looking at a partly faded tag and thought it was saying "aucuparia".
there were 2 tags on the tree, both with aucuparia; if this tree will bear orange/red berries and its leaves turn orange or red in fall, I will have no complaints regarding the mislabeling :) but I will tell about this to the nursery anyway (just out of principle) there might be some other reason for mislabeling: what if they propagate Americanas to sell them later as Aucuparias? The latter are probably difficult to propagate in Canada, while the Americanas are probably considered invasive in Canada; so they sell cheap stuff to Europeans who are looking for their nostalgic plants... I heard that big plant growers are rich people :)
