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Definition 2024


mountain_ash

mountain ash

English

Sorbus aucuparia
Eucalyptus regnans

Noun

mountain ash (usually uncountable, plural mountain ashes)

  1. (Britain) The European species Sorbus aucuparia, commonly known as rowan or more specifically European rowan.
  2. Any of several trees in the genus Sorbus in North America.
    • 1974, William M. Healy, Shrubs and Vines for Northeastern Wildlife, Issues 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 species, Fraxinus texensis.

Usage notes

Genus Sorbus also includes trees commonly known as whitebeam, rowan, and service tree.

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See also