Admiring the curly crown of a beautiful mountain ash, many do not suspect that in nature there are 84 species of this plant, supplemented by a considerable number of hybrid forms. Mountain ash settled in the Northern Hemisphere, having mastered its temperate zone. 34 species grow on Russian open spaces, some of which have been cultivated and used as ornamental shrubs.
Species differ significantly from each other. The color of berries and bark, leaf of mountain ash and other signs of each variety are different. There are very few real mountain ash in the forests, they are rare. Basically, the rowan undergrowth pleases with its unique beauty - miniature deciduous trees 3-6 meters high. Common mountain ash is recognized as the most widespread and well-known species of shrub trees .
What are rowan leaves: complex or simple?
The shape of the leaves of mountain ash is diverse. When you look at leaves from different trees, you involuntarily ask yourself: "Is the mountain ash leaf complex or simple?" According to biologists, there are complex, unpaired, and simple mountain ash leaves. Actually, the division of the bush into two main subgenera is determined by the structure of the leaves .
These mountain ash include trees with cirrus leaves forming openwork crowns. The trees of the second subgenus, due to simple, whole, serrated-lobed and lobed leaves, are distinguished by fairly dense crowns.
The value of real mountain ash is higher. On most of them, edible healing bitter-sweet berries ripen. Regardless of what the mountain ash leaf looks like, all types of trees are widely used in landscape design when arranging all kinds of landscape gardening plots. The bushes are great as solitaires; they look great in group arrangements and regular alleys.
Indeed, in decorativeness, the tree successfully competes with competitors (of which there are not many, by the way), taking away the primacy from individual plants. It is beautiful in any season. And when it sparkles with openwork spring foliage. And when the white boiling of the inflorescences shines. And when it burns with a bright bonfire of foliage touched by autumn scarlet, fiery red clusters of tart berries, especially powdered with the first snow.
Biological description of rowan leaf
In the spring, when the mountain ash buds were just about to bloom, it’s hard to tell right away what kind of bush we are facing. It is well recognizable that the tree in which the leaves are fully unfolded. After all, everyone knows the original rowan leaf. Whether it’s a photo, a drawing, but everyone saw it. They admired him more than once in a park, forest or garden.
The common petiole is covered with many large cirrus small leaves. The construction scheme of each elementary. It is assembled from several pairs of miniature leaflets. Its top is framed by an unpaired separate leaf. Various sources provide a more accurate description of the leaf of mountain ash - plants from the family Rosaceae.
The length of unpaired pinnate leaves reaches 10-20 centimeters. A long, thin, reddish petiole is humbled by 7–15 practically sedentary broad lanceolate or elongated, pointed, serrated along the edge, miniature leaves (3-5 cm long), whole-extreme from the lower end and pointed at the apex.
Rowan foliage in spring and summer
In the spring, a thick fluff is clearly visible on the leaves. They are covered with hairs both from above and from below. By summer, the hairs will fall off, the gentle fluff will disappear, exposing the surface, in the same way as it does with other trees, for example, aspen. A cannon of hairs prevents the rapid evaporation of a liquid that saturates young immature leaf blades.
In summer, usually dull, leathery and rough leaves, painted dull green above, the felt gray bottom reflects pale bluish tones, almost close to a white-silver color.
Rowan leaves in autumn
Green in the summer, rowan leaves in the fall go through three stages of staining. Yellow at first, they gradually acquire shades of orange (from light to intense). And at the end they are painted in a crimson color palette. Autumn crown of the plant glows with golden, orange and terracotta tones.
Foliage, outdated, begins to fall. But mountain ash does not lose whole leaves (unlike many other trees and shrubs). Components are showered from the cirrus leaf one by one. He, losing miniature leaves one by one, as if falling apart into separate parts.
Petiole of a huge leaf is gradually exposed. And only bare completely, the main brick-red vein parted with the plant, flying off from it last.
Unusual Rowan Foliage
When talking about the grace of a tree, the delights of its clusters and the unusual openwork of crowns, they usually mean ordinary mountain ash. However, the world is replete with other luxurious species of mountain ash, although they are much less common.
Types of whole-leaf rowan berries have unique biological features that make their decorative appearance very attractive. The beauty of their whole, often pubescent leaves deserves special attention.
Mountain ash aria
An unusual whole-leaved tree is dotted with West European rare-standing forests. It, ascending upwards by 10-12 m, spreads its magnificent crown in breadth by 6-8 m.
The shape of the leaf of mountain ash Aria is similar to those that sprinkle alder branches. It is solid, round-elliptical, leathery, with a pointed or blunt apex, sharply bipodulate at the edges, reaches a size of 14 x 9 cm. Its top in the middle of summer is juicy-green, and the bottom is white-felt, grayish, as if dusted with flour.
Therefore, in Russian it is called powdery mountain ash. The tree, gleaming with silvery foliage shimmering from a breeze, contrasts spectacularly against the motley background formed by the surrounding plants.
I wonder then, what color are rowan leaves in autumn? In Aria, autumn foliage is painted in a special way. Her immense crown with the onset of autumn shines with chic bronze shades.
Mountain ash intermediate
This species, often called the Swedish mountain ash, is represented by single slender trees 10-15 meters high, wild-growing in the Middle European, Baltic and Scandinavian woodlands. A solid sheet of mountain ash, a photo of which was shot by professionals and amateurs, is very thin.
Above the summer it is dark green, downstairs it is covered with gray hairs, reddish shades in the autumn. The shape of shallow-lobed, on average twelve-centimeter whole leaves is oblong-ovate. Decorative silver foliage forms an original oval crown around a smooth grayish trunk.
Sorbus elderberry
Shrubs scattered over the undergrowth and independent thickets of mountain ash of the elderberry settled in the vast Khabarovsk Territory, Kamchatka and Sakhalin. They captured the Sea of Okhotsk, the Kuril Islands and entered Japan. Shrub trees are distinguished by relatively low height (up to two and a half meters), direct naked dark-brown offspring with bluish bloom, and a round-ovoid discharged crown.
On gray branches with clearly defined lentils, unpaired 18-centimeter leaves concentrated. Petioles of the terracotta gamut are lined with oval-lanceolate acicular leaves, almost naked, glossy dark green. Their number varies from 7 to 15.
Rowan Köhne and Vilmorena
These original straight-stem trees are representatives of the Chinese flora. For habitation they have chosen the forests covering temperate and warm zones in Central China. Vilmorena differs from Köhne in greater height (the first up to 6 m, the second up to 3 m) and the decorativeness of the crown.
Crowns of plants are sprinkled with unpaired leaves. On 20-centimeter petioles 12-25 leaves fit, the edges of which are sharp from the apex to the base. The seasonal rhythm of these plants is very close. Autumn leaf of mountain ash is painted in purple, red-violet colors.
Glowovin Rowan Foliage
Medical Berek (the second name of the plant) is found in the Caucasus and the Crimea. She captured part of the Ukrainian lands, those that stretch across the southwest of the country. Its natural range has spread across Western Europe and Asia Minor. One-on-one trees and compact groups now and then come across in the undergrowth and shrubbery, in the second tier of forests and on sunny slopes.
Slender 25-meter mountain ash covered with rounded crowns. Siblings shimmer with olive shades. Relic trees are dark gray, framed with cracks. With a long (up to 17 centimeters) plate, the rowan leaf is simple, broad-ovoid.
The base plate is rounded heart-shaped, and its tip is pointed. It has fine-toothed edges, is equipped with 3-5 sharp blades. Its top is glossy, dark green, and the bottom is hairy-pubescent. The autumn palette of leaf blades varies from yellow to orange.
There are two varieties of Glogovina: pinnately dissected and with pubescent foliage. Magnificent solo, group and alley landings are formed from one and the other.
Mountain ash alder
Primorye, Japan, Korea, and China were affected by disparate and grouped trees with narrow pyramidal crowns of the mountain ash. They scattered among broad-leaved and cedar forests. Straight, glossy dark brown trunks, directed to the sky, reach a height of 18 meters.
Distinctive features of leaflets are simple, broadly oval, sharp-jagged forms, distinct venation, in the length of a dense leaf blade, not exceeding 10 cm. Their outlines are similar to alder leaves. Hence the name of the tree.
Spring light green leaves of mountain ash cast a slightly bronze coating. In the summer leaf, the lower surface is yellowish, and the upper one is intense dark green. Autumn shines with juicy bright orange shades. The tree is especially beautiful at the time of spring flowering and autumn leaf fall.