The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Hedlundia pseudomeinichii
Also called Gorge Whitebeam
False rowan is a very rare tree endemic to the Isle of Arran in Scotland, known from only one or two living specimens, so it is not a plant for general home growing. It is a rowan-type tree in the rose family, and grown plants exist only as seedlings and grafts held in botanic collections.
Hedlundia pseudomeinichii, known as false rowan and Catacol whitebeam, is a rare species of tree endemic to the Isle of Arran in south-western Scotland. It is believed to have arisen as a hybrid of the native European rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) and the cut-leaved whitebeam (Hedlundia pseudofennica) which is in turn a rowan/Arran whitebeam (Hedlundia arranensis) hybrid. Until 2020, only one living specimens of the Catacol whitebeam was known, at the time making it the rarest tree not only in Scotland, but joint rarest in the world with Wood's cycad. Another was recorded as a sapling, but is believed to have been destroyed by deer. A seedling and grafted plants have also been grown in Edinburgh.
The latest evaluation by IUCN failed to find one of the two trees found, so they state in the red list citation for the species that only one tree is left.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Hedlundia pseudomeinichii by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
