Subject: Re: Native Irish Trees
From: John Neale Baraclough <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 21:53:56 +0100
Newsgroups: alt.permaculture

> The Mountain Ash/Rowan is a lovely tree. The birds have really stripped the
> berries from our big Rowan this year, but normally it is so beautiful with
> all those clumps of bright red berries.  It is said to keep away evil
> spirits, and so would be fitting to plant over a lost pet.

> I've looked around, but never found any info on possible timber uses for it.
> Can anyone help ?

  From "The tree Book"by J Edward Milner ISBN  1-85585-132-6 which 
describes the trees of Britain and Ireland including a lot of their 
history, tree lore and tree craft says of rowan

 " As with every other species of sorbus, the wood is tough and 
strong and trasditionally used for handles of tools, cartwheels,and 
planks and beams (if large enough)."

  extracts from the lore-- tied as a collar to the neck of a hound 
will increase his speed.Keeps the dead from rising.A sovereign 
protector of milk.

  In Norway, rowan bark shavings were fed to cattle in winter (dates 
back to iron age).
  In Wales, people wear Easter crosses made of rowan wood.

  I'm completely addicted to rowans and have a large collection of 
different sorts, with white, pink, red, orange, gold, yellow berries 
and lots of foliage forms.  Some years back a nurseryman called Clive 
Simms who used to specialise in them, decided to change to something 
else so very kindly donated  me his stock of seedlings (about 6" high 
at the time) because I'd been such a keen customer.The bad news is 
I'm very bad at keeping the right labels on things!Now up to 10 ft 
and fruiting.They are also easy to grow from collected seed , of 
course you never know for about 7 years if the child will resemble 
the mother tree....

  Janet

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