The rowans (/ˈraʊənz/ ROW-ənz or /ˈroʊənz/ ROH-ənz)[1] or mountain-ashes are shrubs or trees in the genus Sorbus of the rose family, Rosaceae.

They are native throughout the cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the highest species diversity in the Himalaya, southern Tibet and parts of western China, where numerous apomictic microspecies occur.

The name "rowan" is recorded from 1804, detached from an earlier rowan-tree, rountree, attested from the 1540s in northern dialects of English and Scots.

Norwegian rogn, Danish røn, Swedish rönn), ultimately from the Germanic verb *raud-inan "to redden", in reference to the berries (as is the Latin name sorbus).

Various dialectal variants of rowan are found in English, including ran, roan, rodan, royan, royne, round, and rune.

There were strong taboos in the Highlands against the use of any parts of the tree save the berries, except for ritual purposes.

For example, a Gaelic threshing tool made of rowan and called a buaitean was used on grain meant for rituals and celebrations.

[citation needed] In the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, this species is commonly referred to as a "dogberry" tree.

The fruit are soft and juicy, which makes them a very good food for birds, particularly waxwings and thrushes, which then distribute the rowan seeds in their droppings.

[citation needed] In Norse mythology, the goddess Sif is the wife of the thunder god Thor, who has been linked with Ravdna.

Searbhán allowed the pair to rest and hunt in his forest, as long as they did not eat the berries of his magical rowan tree.

"[17] Fionn Mac Cuimhaill tracked the couple to the rowan tree and tricked Diarmuid into revealing himself through a game of chess.

[20] British folklorists of the Victorian era reported the folk belief in apotropaic powers of the rowan-tree, in particular in the warding off of witches.

[21] Sir James Frazer (1890) reported such a tradition in Scotland, where the tree was often planted near a gate or front door.

[22] In 1891, Charles Godfrey Leland also reported traditions of rowan's apotropaic powers against witches in English folklore, citing the Denham Tracts (collected between 1846 and 1859).

"[25] In Newfoundland, popular folklore maintains that a heavy crop of fruit means a hard or difficult winter.

[citation needed] Similarly, if the rowan flowered twice in a year there would be many potatoes and many weddings that autumn.

[citation needed] And in Sipoo people are noted as having said that winter had begun when the waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus) had eaten the last of the rowan fruit.

[29] In Sweden, it was also thought that if the rowan trees grew pale and lost colour, the autumn and winter would bring much illness.

[30] References to the rowan fruit's red color and the flowers' beauty are common in Celtic music.

Quickbeam declares his fondness for the tree by saying that no other "people of the Rose ... are so beautiful to me," a reference to the rowan's membership in the family Rosaceae.