mountain ash

mountain ash (usually uncountable, plural mountain ashes)

1. (British) A European tree, rowan or, more specifically, European rowan, of species Sorbus aucuparia.
   • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, 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.

   • 1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 271:

     Various measures were taken to avoid it, most popular being the suspension of certain herbs and tree branches over the doorways of dwellings and stables. Commonly used greenery were tansy, honesty, garlic, St. John's Wort, mountain ash, roadside verbena.

   • 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, numbers 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 of 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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