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THE MOUNTAIN ASH, or ROWAN TREE. 
PYRUS AUCUPARIA. 
-The mountain ash 
No eye can overlook, when mid a grove 
Of yet unfaded trees she lifts her head. 
Deck’d with autumnal berries, that outshine 
Spring’s richest blossoms; and ye may have mark’d 
By a brook side or solitary tarn, 
How she her station doth adorn : the pool 
Glows at her feet, and all the gloomy rocks 
Are brighten’d round her.” 
The common appellation of this beautiful tree, the 
character of its foliage, and its choice of situation, have 
led to some confusion respecting its classification. Ge- 
rarde and Gilpin, for instance, have considered a variety 
of the true ash (Fraxinus); an error which has not 
escaped the animadversions of later botanists, who all 
now concur in comprehending it in the genus Pyrus. 
It is a tree of slow growth; the wood is compact 
and tough, which made it, in the days of our warlike 
