The Rowthorn: A Very Rare and Special Tree
Not too long ago, I began working with an extremely unique tree that I have since become pacted to, and I have finally been given leave to share about it publicly. It's a tree so unusual that it technically bares no common name and, instead, only has a couple of cultivar names and an undecided scientific name. The tree in question is one I have been calling a Rowthorn, since it is a cross between a Rowan Tree (Sorbus Acuparia) and a Hawthorn Tree (Crataegus Monogyna.) The resultant Crataegosorbus (or Sorbocrataegus, depending on your source) is a hybrid developed by Russian horticulturist Ivan Michurin in the 1920s, and can be phenotypically described as a nobbled Rowan tree with berries that look like rosy Haws the size of cherries. Miraculously, these Rowthorn berries are generally considered better for eating and cooking than either Rowan berries or Hawthorn berries are.
This tree is special to me for a couple reasons. On one hand, my grandfather was a botanist who specifically worked creating fruit tree hybrids in his day, which gives me a strange sort of ancestral connection to a tree born through human efforts. On the other hand, both Hawthorns and Rowans are quite historically and personally significant to my practice. Hawthorns possess ancient ties to the Otherworld and its denizens, and can serve to mark "thin places" where the realms are less experientially distinct from one another. As such, the Fae are often said to congregate at the sites of old Whitethorn trees. On the other hand, Rowans are also beloved by the Fae, who are said to enjoy dancing beneath their holy boughs—though, harvested wood from the tree can be utilized in a protective capacity against them as well. This ability of Rowan to both delight and repell the Fae is, in turn, closley aligned with my work as a Faerie Physicker. As such, a tree like the Rowthorn—which embodies the virtues of both these magical plants—is one I couldn't pass up the opportunity to know better, and so I invested in one the instant I was lucky enough to come across it.
Watching it grow from a bare and miniscule scion into a slowly flourishing sapling has been beautiful, and I can hardly wait for the day that it bares its first fruits.