Sorbus domestica is rare enough in Switzerland that a healthy one beside a road counts as a find. The service tree is the overlooked member of a familiar family, a relative of the rowan that grows into a proper timber tree and carries small brown fruit shaped like miniature apples or pears. Those fruits are why anybody ever planted it. Hard and sour straight off the branch, they were left to go soft and brown before eating, and went into cider and perry across southern Europe to sharpen them. This one went into the ground in April 1966 on the Route de Pregny, which makes it about sixty years old, young for a tree on this list. The date is worth trusting for an unglamorous reason: the register records a real month for it, where its uncertain entries all default to the first of January. It measures 247 centimetres round and is in good health, and it is here for what it is rather than for how big it is. The register is also the only source that mentions it, which is thin for a species this easy to mistake for a rowan or a wild service tree. If you know this tree, or know who put it there, tell us. It is a five-minute walk from the tulip tree in Parc de l'Impératrice, which makes the two of them one stop rather than two.
Route de Pregny, near Parc de l'ImpératriceA modest roadside tree on the Route de Pregny, easy to mistake for a rowan. Five minutes' walk from the tulip tree in Parc de l'Imperatrice.
Free, standing on the roadside at Route de Pregny in a public green space, per the register's own situation field.
Bus toward Chambésy/Pregny, or roughly 25 minutes on foot from the botanical garden
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- In the official register: Inventaire des arbres isolés (SITG, République et canton de Genève), no. 60372
- sitg.ge.ch
