Aria torminalis
species of plant
Aria torminalis is a species of flowering plant in the rose family, Rosaceae. It is a tree commonly known as wild service tree, chequers, and checker tree, which is native to Europe, northwestern Africa, and western Asia.
The species was formerly included within the genus Sorbus as the section Torminaria, but the simple-leafed species traditionally classified in Sorbus are now considered to form a separate monophyletic group.
Description
Aria torminalis is a medium-sized deciduous tree growing to about 30 m (100 ft) tall, with a trunk up to 1.3 m in diameter. The bark is smooth and grey when young, becoming scaly and flaking away in squarish plates to reveal darker brown layers when about 30 years old. Young twigs are lightly hairy, quickly becoming glabrous, and brownish in colour. Winter identification is made easier by the buds, which are green and pea-sized with obvious brown-edged scales.
The leaves are 6–14 centimetres (2–6 inches) long and broad with a 2.5–5 cm (1–2 in) petiole, dark green on both sides, with five to nine acute lobes; the basal pair of lobes are spreading, the rest more forward-pointing and decreasing in size to the leaf apex, and with finely toothed margins; the undersides have small hairs when young, but both sides are smooth and shiny when older; the autumn colour is yellow to red-brown. The flowers are 10–15 millimetres (3⁄8–5⁄8 in) in diameter, with five white petals and 20 creamy-white stamens; they are produced in corymbs 5–12 cm (2–4+1⁄2 in) diameter in late spring to early summer, and are hermaphroditic and insect pollinated. The fruit is a globose to ovoid pome 10–15 mm in diameter, greenish to russet or brown, patterned with small pale lenticel spots when mature in mid to late autumn.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Aria torminalis” is species of plant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Aria, torminalis and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q139936561. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aria torminalis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.