Tag Archives: rowan tree

National Tree for Scotland?

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I was watching the Scottish news on the TV one evening last week when an article came on about the fact that Scotland doesn’t have a national tree. It had never occurred to me that we were missing a trick there, after all we always think of England’s tree as being the oak, I think America has the giant redwood as its national tree, for Canada it’s obviously the maple. Is it eucalyptus for Australia? Lebanon has the cedar and off the top of my head I can’t think of any others.

The chap who was speaking about it wants the Scots Pine to fit the bill and I must say I did totally agree with him at the time, after all they are beautiful so it would be a great emblem for us. They give shelter and sustenance to our native red squirrels and pine martens, and lots of other beasties too I’m sure.

Then I thought about it and it seemed to me that it would be a shame not to have the rowan tree (mountain ash) as an emblem of Scotland too. So, from having no Scottish national tree I think we should go the whole hog and have two, one evergreen and one deciduous, and I can’t think of any other trees which would represent Scotland so well.

I always think of rowans as being particularly Scottish, and they’re steeped in Celtic mythology. If a garden of mine didn’t have one when I moved into it, it was never long before I planted one, to keep the witches away, and provide food for the birds.

You can have a look at a BBC report on the subject here.

Apparently there are 70 countries in the world which have trees as symbols, at the moment I’d be hard pushed to name 70 countries, never mind their trees!

You can have a look at Scots pine images here.

And rowan tree images are here.

If you want to know a bit more about the mythology and folklore surrounding the rowan have a look here.

More garden

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This was my garden just a couple of days ago. I took the photo from just underneath my metal arch, you can just see the edges of it at the top. This is the main sitting area of the garden and I got the so-called summer-house from B&Q back in the time when we used to get some really hot days and it was handy for me to sit in it when I needed some cooler shade to read in. At the moment it has become a wee bit of a dumping ground for things which have been emptied out of the attics and haven’t been recycled or otherwise found a new home yet.

rowan berries 1
They always say that you should plant trees for your grandchildren, meaning that they are slow growing so you probably won’t live long enough to be able to appreciate them, but the trees which I have planted all seem to grow like Topsy. They’ve shaded out the greenhouse which is behind these trees and since taking this photo I’ve been busy with the loppers and a saw. I couldn’t even see the top of the silver birch tree which was only about three feet tall when I planted it 10 years ago. I’ve cut back all of the branches and my husband hacked the top of it out, a good eight feet of it I think. When I move to another garden, remind me never to plant any trees because as they grow stronger – you (me) grow weaker!

summer house

The blackbirds have been enjoying the rowan berries and when they’ve stripped them all off I’m going to give the tree a good haircut as it’s spreading far too wide and high and casting an awful lot of shade.

rowan berries

The grass is now covered with lopped tree branches and my brown garden recycling bin is full so we’ll be making yet another trip to the town recycling centre. One good thing about this area is that all garden waste is composted by the council instead of it just going to landfill.

I’ll take some more garden photos when it has all been tidied and cut back, no doubt it’ll look drastic, but it has to be done!