Vosges whitebeam

Photo: MPF — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 4 through 7

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

A tetraploid, apomictic hybrid between whitebeam (S. aria) and rowan (S. aucuparia), like many of the 'whitebeam' microspecies scattered across European mountains. Fruit is duller red than the related Swedish whitebeam's. ⚠ Not just astringent: raw fruit in this group contains parasorbic acid, which causes vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if you eat any quantity of it. Cooking, freezing, drying or a hard frost converts it to harmless sorbic acid — which is exactly why every traditional recipe cooks it and why the fruit is picked after the first frosts.

Hardiness

Zone 4–7

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Sept–Oct

Mature size

To about 10 m, multi-stemmed

Light

Full sun to part shade

Soil pH

5.5–7.5 (mildly acid to mildly alkaline); tolerates poor soil

Environment

Alpine to temperate

Native range

Mountains of central and western Europe — the Pyrenees east through the Alps to Austria, north to the Vosges Mountains.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

5–8 yrs

Growth speed

Slow to moderate

Spacing

600 cm (236 in) apart — about 36 m² (388 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Shallowly lobed with forward-pointing lobes (less deeply cut than Swedish whitebeam), dense white hairs beneath

Root system

Deep and tough, at home in rock crevices and thin limestone soils — the source of the drought and wind tolerance behind its use in land reclamation and street planting.

Fruit description

Berry-like pome, duller red than most whitebeams

Propagation

Seed, which comes true because the tree is apomictic, making it the simplest of the whitebeams to raise; cold stratify over winter. Named clones are grafted onto Sorbus aucuparia.

Pollination

Apomictic — a tetraploid microspecies that sets seed without fertilisation, so a single tree crops fully and its seedlings come essentially identical to it. That is precisely why the European mountains carry dozens of near-indistinguishable whitebeams rather than one variable one.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.