Sorbus tianschanica - Tian-Shan Rowan

Tian-Shan Rowan is a shrub or small tree, up to 5 m tall. Flowers are borne in 6-10 x 7-12 cm long, loosely many flowered cluster, axis and flower-stalks hairless; bracts falling off, linear, 5-8 mm, membranous. Flowers are 1.5-1.8 cm in diameter. Petals are white, ovate or elliptic, 6-9 x 5-7 mm, above white velvet-hairy, tip blunt. Stamens are 15-20, about 1/2 as long as petals or shorter. Styles are 3-5, somewhat shorter or nearly as long as stamens, densely white woolly basally. Sepal cup is bell-shaped, below hairless, sepals triangular, 1.5-2.5 mm, tip blunt, rarely pointed. Branchlets are brown or grayish brown, round, warty; young shoots reddish brown, finely velvet-hairy. Flower-stalks are 4-8 mm. Leaves are compound with axis 14-17 cm; leaf-stalk 1.5-3.3 cm; axis grooved above, slightly winged, hairless. Leaflets are 6 or 7 pairs, at intervals of 1.5-2 cm, blade ovate-lanceshaped, 5-7 x 1.2-2 cm, end ones and basal ones smaller than others, both surfaces hairless, below pale, base obliquely rounded or broadly wedge-shaped, margin sharply sawtoothed but entire basally, or with 2-5 teeth per side, tip tapering. Fruit is scarlet, spherical, 1-1.2 cm in diameter, hairless; sepals persistent. Tian-Shan Rowan is found in mountain valleys, stream sides, forest margins, at altitudes of 2000-3200 m, from Central Asia to N. China and W. Himalaya. Flowering: May-June.