Where are you located? If it were in my area, I'd say it was a good chance of being a European mountain ash, Sorbus aucuparia, although I'd need a close up to be sure. These are frequently planted by birds feeding on the berries they produce and pop up so regularly in both gardens and wild areas as to be considered an invasive species.

Yes..mountain ash.

Thanks for your answer. Here are the leaves

If you cut it down it will resprout from the stump, they are pretty hard to kill that way. Better save it, they are really nice medium size trees.

"they are really nice medium size trees."

Except where they are weedy, messy, borderline invasive species ;-)

You should be happy if they are invasive ;-)

if you cut it to the ground ... apply a stump killer or undiluted round up to teh cut stump ... and it should die ...

the real question is... whats worth more.. the fence and the cost of replacement.. or a self sown weed tree ...???

if you want a tree.. plant a heritage tree of value... dont rely on one the came out the back end of a bird .... as it sat on the fence ...

anything that grows 15 feet in no time at all.. is not a quality tree... in my vernacular ...

ken

"You should be happy if they are invasive ;-)"

Why should I be happy with the proliferation of a non-native, invasive species? Is this a serious statement??

No, not really serious, thats why I put a smiley at the end

It probably came from a bird sitting on the fence, with the source tree growing somewhere in the vicinity the bird has been. In my region this tree is common, with there being plenty of berries produced every year.

if you want a tree.. plant a heritage tree of value... dont rely on one the came out the back end of a bird .... as it sat on the fence ...

My laugh for the entire week.....right up there with other Great Quotes From Ken....

such as (paraphrased) "Throw the Hosta On the Driveway'

I have a childish sense of humor

"if you want a tree.. plant a heritage tree of value... dont rely on one that came out the back end of a bird .... as it sat on the fence ..."

yes Marie, I agree this is a Ken classic!

That being said I'd love to be able to grow one of these here, but they just can't stand the heat.

That being said I'd love to be able to grow one of these here, but they just can't stand the heat.

Have you tried sorbus commixta? IMH a better mountain ash than s. aucuparia and still larger final size than the american species. And it's from east Asia so it should tolerate heat pretty well. But I guess it's as invasive as other asian trees in eastern US

Huggorm - IIRC my research showed for some reason the various Asian species are either very hard to get here, or not as showy as the European one, or in some other way non-starters. For example I don't like the purplish-red berry color of some of them. There is some hybrid - European X Asian IIRC - whose online photos looked promising but it is only available in the EU/UK.

Sorbus aucuparia grows in eastern WA - and in fact looks healthier over there than here. So I wonder why it would be too hot in Colorado.

http://navigate.botanicgardens.org/weboi/oecgi2.exe/INET_ECM_DispPl?NAMENUM=17318&DETAIL=1&startpage=1

Davidrt28 - That's too bad, but I can see a business opportunity for some ambitious tree nursery. Sorbus ulleungensis is probably the best mountain ash in the world, endemic to a tiny Korean island. Marketed in the UK as sorbus commixta "olympic flame". Stunning red fall color and red fruit, and the leaves emerge early and are a "greener" green than sorbus aucuparia. Also, they do not have as many pests as the european mountain ash, but I guess that depend on where they are grown

Most Sorbus is very susceptible to borers and also fire blight in the eastern U.S. which are deadly or severely damaging problems.

They are also susceptible to cankers, rusts, aphids, sawflies, and scale. So they are usually short lived in the eastern U.S.

Sorbus alnifolia is one that is supposedly borer/disease resistant, but the leaves are not like a typical Mountain Ash.

Yes, that's a whitebeam, that's another subgenus of sorbus. Nice trees though, even if they don't have pinnate leaves

Re: The invasiveness of Sorbus aucuparia: True enough, birds do deposit viable seeds hither and yon, but in no way, shape, or form should this be held equivalent to something like common buckthorn or various non-native honeysuckles. Those two items can really take over a wooded site-the Sorbus not so much.

I don't mind someone pointing out that this or that exotic plant is invasive somewhere in the US, but I decry the placement of such a low-impact plant in the same category as real trouble-makers. It aren't. Not saying anyone here so ranked it, but making an appeal to all readers-there are very different degrees of invasiveness. Some plants still just "naturalize" in my book, not necessarily becoming problems in the process.

+oM

But I guess SA has potential to really be invasive, at least in the pacific NW or along the Alaska west coast. They are everywhere here, I don't think you can take ten steps in the woods around here without seeing any seedlings. But they need quite a lot of light to grow large and set seed though, so they are not really a threat to anything

Hug, you bring up a good point, and one I should have captured in my post abopve-namely, that these things vary by location. Sorbus aucuparia escapes into the wild here in WI but to place it in the same top tier of truly damaging invasive species as some of those I mentioned above would be folly. But maybe in the PNW, it's a different story. It's been a long time since I was out that way, so I don't really know.

+oM

"Sorbus alnifolia is one that is supposedly borer/disease resistant,"

I just saw one at the National Arboretum that looked disease free, however I had to remove one in my garden that I got from Arborvillage just before they closed because one year, after going for several years w/o it, it got a huge case of fireblight. Almost all of the top turned orange. It managed to regrow later in the summer and I doubt it would ever have died of it, but I didn't want a plant in the garden where that could happen. Imagine in 20 years when it was full sized - how hideous that would have been to deal with.

When I went on a googling binge of Sorbus years ago, there seemed to be much more hybridizing and selecting going on in Europe. There was some promising Asian X Asian or Asian X European hybrid, fairly easy to buy in the UK, that looked very promising. Advertised as completely resistant to everything they encounter there (which may not matter here, granted) BUT it wasn't listed in NALT, wasn't in the UMN plantfinder, didn't have any google links in the US so I assume it was never imported. Looked like a conventional mountain ash, too. Longwood Gardens has a selection of one of the Asian species but it's really hard to find. IIRC Forestfarm was sold out of it a few years ago, I should look again I suppose.

Duh, so stupid of me...finally remembered the name of it: Sorbus x kewensis

Does not show in any US gardens at the RBGE multisite search engine, so probably never imported. In any case, if you look at UK/EU nursery sites vs. US ones, there are many many more rare Sorbus, even from Asia and not Europe, available there. For example I just read about Sorbus randaiensis...which is also not listed by Jacobson's NALT book.

The pest and disease problems with Sorbus in eastern North America would have a filtering effect, the tendency for plants to be imported and tried back there first has been called "the usual East Coast courtesy stop". There is a lot more people back there, so odds are something will be tried there before any company here brings it in - and if it fails back there it may never make it out here, where it often might do fine.

Some Korean mountain ash street plantings around here have been terrific in fall, after the leaves drop and the abundant fruits show up well.

The Seattle arboretum has a significant Sorbus collection:

http://depts.washington.edu/uwbg/gardens/BGBase.php

That's a pretty impressive sorbus collection, probably one of the best in the world

The original core collections at the arboretum here were built up by the late Brian O. Mulligan, an outstanding horticulturist who came over from Britain. He directed the facility from 1947 to 1972, and was interested in Rose Family plants - one of the most spectacular wild origin roses known is named after him 10 years previously. Just north of the Brian O. Mulligan Sorbus Collection are several examples of this tree-climbing plant.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=rosa+mulliganii&qpvt=rosa+mulliganii&qpvt=rosa+mulliganii&FORM=IGRE

Bboy, I always appreciate the background and knowledge you bring about PNW horticulture. If I'm ever in the Seattle area in the autumn, I'll check those out.