Back where I come from in the Midlands, there’s a place on the Malvern Hills with the delightful name of Happy Valley where each autumn Ring Ouzels turn up on their migration. They’re heading south to the Atlas Mountains in northern Africa, but they do like to stop off and feed up for a few days. The valley’s attraction is a number of Rowan trees, Sorbus aucuparia, where they can gobble the red berries to their hearts’ content.Given that we’re coming into the best time of year for planting trees, Rowan is certainly a great option for the wildlife gardener to think about, although I can’t promise you Ring Ouzels if you do plant one!But while I love the plain old native, I’m ever keen to suss out the more exotic trees that wildlife gardeners might like to try, so it was good to see Sorbus vilmorinii 'in action' last weekend (right). It’s a small tree from China, only growing to 6 metres (20 feet) max, so is ideal for smaller gardens. It has white heads of flowers in spring and nice autumn foliage as well, but the big attraction is again the berries, which are an unexpected and delicate pink. Taking advantage of them last Saturday were Chaffinches, but I suspect that the thrushes will happily take them too.Or maybe you have a Sorbus you’d like to recommend?
why have I so few berries on my rowan, please?
Hi AQ
You poor thing - berryless! Is it Common Rowan? Does it normally have lots of berries? A number of factors may be at work (such as too shady, low numbers of pollinators in your area this year) but there are two big things that spring to mind for me - one is that Rowan I believe is not great at self-pollinating, so having two is really useful. The second (and I'm going to be brave and plump for this) is that Rowan is a 'masting' tree - it has bumper years and then years when very little fruit sets. I'm going to suggest you're in a lull year!
common rowan, and probably not the BEST berry bearer in the world. But not the worst. Till this year.
IT'll get more sun next year, thanks to the loss of one of the be-dutched elms. I might see if I can find a spot for a pal somewhere.
Good ideas, Adrian, thanks.