American Mountain Ash, Dogberry

A lovely small tree to about 30 feet high. The compound leaves are 6 to 12" long with 11 to 17 toothed leaflets being 2 to 4" long. Gets ...Read Morea good fall color of golden to red-purple. Young bark is tan-gray and smooth with conspicuous hortizontal lenticels, but becomes more brown and scaly with age. Small white flowers in flat-topped clusters in late spring. Bears orange-red to scarlet red fruit in late summer and early autumn eaten by birds and small mammals.

Grows about 1.0 to 1.5 feet/year and lives about 25 to 50 years. If grown in regions of hot summers as Chicago, IL or Philadelphia, PA, it usually only lives about 20 years before being killed by borers due to heat stress; also disliking drought. Grows in dry to wet soils with pH 5 to 7.5. Found in nature the most in either swamps and bogs or up around rocky mountain ridges (balds). Native from Newfoundland to southern Manitoba to around the northern area of the Great Lakes, parts of NY & PA, New England, and down the Appalachians to north Georgia. Used in the far north in landscapes some. Offered by some native plant nurseries or grown as a native plant by nurseries for state parks and other parks, as Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in central PA. In September 2017 I saw a good specimen in the Appalachian Collection at Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL, in a sheltered part-shade siting.

The very similar Showy Mountainash is native to a similar area and is a little more ornamental with bigger flower clusters and fruit. It is the European Mountainash (Rowantree) that had been used a lot in landscpes in the central area of the Midwest and East in the 1950's into the 1970's and not used much anymore there.

A gorgeous tree that adds interest from spring through fall. In the spring there's the white flowers, followed by the orange fruit, then...Read More the glorious fall leaf coloring.

Burbank was actively propagating these trees in experiments in the early 1900s. There remain at least 3 partial "orchard rows" of Sorbus ...Read Moreat his Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol CA. These trees are estimated to have been planted sometime between 1890 and 1920 and still bear a abundance of fruit each year.

Note, Foliage: A good source of "fall color".

Interesting Note Regarding Ripening of Fruit:
The fruit of the Sorbus is only edible after being "bletted", in other words, after falling to ground and fermenting.

The flesh then has a custard-like consistency and people describe it alternately as tasting like both vanilla and chocolate pudding.