What is "rowan"

Rowan \Row"an\, n. Rowan tree.

Rowan barry, a barry of the rowan tree.

"mountain ash," 1804, from rowan-tree, rountree (1540s), northern English and Scottish, from a Scandinavian source (compare Old Norse reynir, Swedish Ronn "the rowan"), ultimately from the root of red, in reference to the berries.\n\nThere were those in this neighbourhood, long after the beginning of the present century, who believed that a slip of rowan tree carried on their person dispelled glamour, and rendered nugatory all the powers of sorcery and witchcraft.

[Alexander Laing, "Lindores Abbey and the Burgh of Newburgh," Edinburgh, 1876]

n. 1 ''Sorbus aucuparia'', the European rowan. 2 Any of various small deciduous trees or shrubs of genus ''Sorbus'', belonging to the rose family, with pinnate leaves, corymbs of white flowers, and usually with orange-red berries.

n. Eurasian tree with orange-red berrylike fruits [syn: rowan tree, European mountain ash, Sorbus aucuparia]

The rowans or mountain-ashes are shrubs or trees in the genus Sorbus of the rose family Rosaceae. They are native throughout the cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the highest species diversity in the mountains of western China and the Himalaya, where numerous apomictic microspecies occur. The name rowan was originally applied to the species Sorbus aucuparia and is also used for other species in the Sorbus subgenus Sorbus. Rowans are unrelated to the true ash trees, which belong to the genus Fraxinus, family Oleaceae, though their leaves are superficially similar.

Formerly, when a wider variety of fruits were commonly eaten in Europe and North America, Sorbus was a domestically used fruit throughout these regions. It is still used in some countries, but Sorbus domestica, for example, is now all but extinct in Britain, where it was traditionally revered. Natural hybrids, often including Sorbus aucuparia and the whitebeam, Sorbus aria, give rise to many endemic variants in the UK.

Rowans are a genus (or subgenus) of deciduous trees in family Rosaceae that are notable for their red berries.

Rowan may also refer to:

Rowan is an Irish given name and surname. Variants of the name include Roan, Ruadhán ( Irish), Ruadh (Irish). The name comes from the Irish surname Ó Ruadháin. It is also an Arabic feminine name referring to a river in Paradise.