Sorbus sitchensis M.Roem.

Sorbus sitchensis can be distinguished from S. occidentalis by its larger, more toothed leaflets, and from all other species by the combination of its red-brown hairy, slightly glaucous, non-sticky buds; blunt, slightly glaucous, non-papillose leaflets; and the pinkish coloration of the fruit. However, many herbarium specimens named S. sitchensis are in fact S. californica as have been several lots of seed received from Western North American Botanic Gardens. S. sitchensis was probably not in cultivation in Britain until the mid 1970s when seed was received at Ness from Seattle Botanic Garden. More recently seed of known wild origin has been received from Castle Lake near Mt. Shasta in California and from Alaska, all of which have now died. Other provenances are in cultivation at Dawyck, an annex to RBGE and making very attractive fruiting shrubs with their unusual fruit colour.

Like Sorbus californica, S. sitchensis is a slow growing shrub which seems to be less drought tolerant. It bears heavy crops of fruit at an early age when less than a metre tall, but the fruits are rather attractive to birds. Both species have rather thick, far-spreading root systems which are usually badly damaged by transplanting, so these species should be container grown or, if grown in the open ground, transplanted each year to produce a compact root system.

BEAN:

An erect many-stemmed shrub 5 to 15 ft high; young growths rusty-hairy, becoming glabrous and purplish, sparsely lenticellate. Leaves up to 8 in. long, including petiole; rachis sometimes crimson, obscurely grooved, usually glabrous except for hairs and glands at the base of the leaflets, which are in three to five pairs, oblong-elliptic, up to 2 in. long and 7⁄8 in. wide, abruptly acute or rounded at the apex, sharply and rather deeply toothed in the upper half or two-thirds, glabrous on both sides except for some rusty hairs on the midrib beneath. Inflorescence rounded, with up to eighty flowers, its branches rusty-hairy. Flowers white with more or less orbicular petals; receptacle glabrous or slightly downy. Fruits described as red with a glaucous bloom; they are ellipsoid to globular, about 3⁄8 in. wide.

Native of western N. America from Alaska and south Yukon east to Montana and Idaho; described from specimens collected by Mertens in south Alaska. It differs from its geographical neighbour S. scopulina in having brown rather than white hairs, and in the fewer leaflets, blunt or even almost truncate at the apex and less fully toothed. The inflorescence too is smaller and rounder. Its nearest ally appears to be the Japanese S. matsumarana.