mountain ash

mountain ash (usually uncountable, plural mountain ashes)

1. (Britain) The European species Sorbus aucuparia, commonly known as rowan or more specifically European rowan.
   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, H.L. Brækstad, transl., Folk and Fairy Tales, page 280:

     On the verdant slope and down by the edge of the water, the bird-cherry and the mountain ash displayed their flowery garb of summer.

   • 2007, Tyler Guthrie, Mountain Ash: Formally Rowan Tree, Trinity College, Academic Dissertation.
2. Any of several trees in the genus Sorbus in North America.
   • 1974, William M. Healy, Shrubs and Vines for Northeastern Wildlife, Issues 6-10, page 99,

     All three mountain-ashes are shrubs of climax and subclimax northern coniferous forest communities, along with speckled alder, Labrador tea, mountain and red maples, yellow birch, and bunchberry.

   • 2008, Elna Fone Nugent, Mountain Ash: A New England Memoir, page 30:

     To the front left of the house, just up from the sidewalk, was a mountain ash tree. Before I was born, Gramma Moody, planted the mountain ash tree there.

   • 2011, Ruth Sims, The Legend of the Mountain Ash, unnumbered page:

     In the hills of Appalachia, in a cove that no living man will ever find, is a Mountain Ash unlike any other in the world.

3. A tree native to southeastern Australia, Eucalyptus regnans, the tallest of all flowering plants.
   • 2002, Brendan Mackey; David Lindenmayer; Malcolm Gill; Michael McCarthy; Janette Lindesay, editors, Wildlife, Fire and Future Climate: A Forest Ecosystem Analysis, page 42:

     McCarthy and Lindenmayer (1998) developed a model of the development of multi-aged Mountain Ash forest in response to fire. The model predicted the prevalence of multi-aged Mountain Ash forest as a function of the mean fire interval.

4. A Texan ash tree species, Fraxinus texensis.

Genus Sorbus also includes trees commonly known as whitebeam, rowan, and service tree.

• (Sorbus aucuparia): European rowan, rowan, quicken (chiefly Ireland, Northern England)
• (Eucalyptus regnans): stringy gum, swamp gum, Tasmanian oak, Victorian ash
• (Fraxinus texensis): Texas ash

• American mountain ash

• mountain ash on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Sorbus on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Sorbus on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Eucalyptus regnans on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

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