Kashmir rowan

Description

Sorbus cashmiriana, the Kashmir rowan, is a species of flowering plant in the family Rosaceae, native to the western Himalayas, including Kashmir. It is a small, usually short-lived deciduous tree growing to 6–8 m (20–26 ft), with a trunk up to 25 cm (10 in) in diameter. The bark is smooth grey or red-grey. The leaves are 15–23 cm (6–9 in) long, pinnate, with 15–21 leaflets, dark green on top and lighter green underneath, the petiole reddish, the leaflets 3–5.5 cm (1–2 in) long and 1.5–2 cm broad, with serrated margins. The flowers are 7–10 mm in diameter, with five very pale pink petals and pale yellowish stamens, produced in corymbs in the spring. Pollination is by insects. The fruit is a white to whitish-pink pome 12–15 mm in diameter, ripening in the autumn and often persisting long after the leaf fall into winter. It is a popular ornamental tree, grown for its clusters of white fruit. It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. Sorbus is a genus of over 100 species of trees and shrubs in the rose family, Rosaceae. Species of Sorbus are commonly known as whitebeam, rowan (mountain-ash) and service tree. The exact number of species is disputed depending on the circumscription of the genus, and also due to the number of apomictic microspecies, which some treat as distinct species, but others group in a smaller number of variable species. Recent treatments classify Sorbus in a narrower sense to include only the pinnate leaved species of subgenus Sorbus, raising several of the other subgenera to generic rank. Sorbus is not closely related to the true ash trees which belong to the genus Fraxinus, although the leaves are superficially similar.