Rowan

Core lore

Rowan grows higher up a mountain than almost any other British tree, often out of a crack in bare rock where nothing planted it, and that habit of appearing in unlikely places is part of its reputation. Scottish and Northern English practice treats it as the protective tree above all others: rowan planted by the door, rowan crosses bound with red thread and hung over byre and lintel, rowan sprigs carried against ill-wishing.

The detail people notice first is the small five-pointed star at the base of each berry, where the calyx dried down — a pentagram, entirely by accident of botany, on a bright red fruit. Once seen it is difficult to unsee, and it did the tree's reputation no harm at all.

The berries were made into a sharp jelly for game, and birds strip a tree in days. Whether any of the protective work does anything is unanswerable in the usual way; that a rowan by the door is a good tree to have is not in dispute.

How the community carries it

Readings practitioners have offered, ordered by how many recognise them. Take what serves, leave the rest.

• Carried forward

  Scottish and Northern English folk practice

  Two rowan twigs bound into a cross with red thread and hung above a door, a byre or a bed. The red thread is not optional in any of the recorded versions, and the cross is generally made without the use of a knife.

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• Carried forward

  Common in contemporary practice

  The star at the base of the berry is read as a pentagram and treated as the tree announcing itself. It is a dried calyx and does the same thing on other pome fruit, apples included — which practitioners generally know and find delightful rather than deflating.

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