Chinese rowan

Photo: Norbert Nagel, Mörfelden-Walldorf, Germany — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 6 through 8

Harvest calendar

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

Grown chiefly for its fern-like foliage and dense clusters of small bright red fruit, which color the tree late into autumn — the fruit itself is astringent like other rowans and would need cooking into jelly to be palatable, but it's mostly left for birds rather than harvested. ⚠ 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 6–8

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer–autumn

Mature size

Small tree 4–8 m with a wide, flat-topped crown

Light

Full sun to partial

Soil pH

6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)

Environment

Montane

Native range

A restricted native range in western Sichuan, China, historically recorded near Baoxing (Moupin), and adjacent Yunnan, growing in mixed mountain forests on slopes at roughly 1,600–3,000 m elevation.

Status

Ornamental

Years to fruit

2–4 yrs

Growth speed

Moderate — reaching around 5 m x 4 m after 10 years and eventually up to about 10 m tall and wide.

Spacing

700 cm (276 in) apart — about 49 m² (527 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Pinnately compound 'ladder-leaf' foliage with 21–33 narrow, glossy, closely set dark green leaflets, downy beneath, turning orange, red, and purple in autumn.

Root system

Heart-root system typical of the genus, with no suckering documented.

Fruit description

Small, rounded, bright red pomes about 7 mm across borne in dense clusters; birds take them slowly so they persist late into the season — the fruit is grown chiefly as an ornamental/wildlife food rather than harvested, and like other astringent Sorbus fruit would need cooking into jelly to be palatable.

Propagation

By seed with cold stratification, though most cultivated trees trace back to a single clone raised at Hillier's from wild-collected material; the species is self-incompatible and seedlings grown from it are often hybrids, so grafting or budding is used to keep named clones true.

Pollination

Self-incompatible — seedlings raised from open-pollinated fruit are commonly hybrids with other Sorbus, which is why named forms are propagated vegetatively rather than from seed.

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.