Ancient fruit
Sorbus domestica L. · Family: Rosaceae
This plant produces fruits that look similar to one another, yet prove very different in size and shades of colour. Depending on the variety, it can grow as a shrub, a small sapling or even a fully fledged tree reaching 12 m in height; flowering takes place between May and June, when it is covered with delicate white flowers.
The fruits are ovoid or round pomes of variable size, red-orange when ripe; the fruits of some species have been used in herbal medicine since antiquity for their high vitamin C content. Mentioned by Dante, the genus is widespread throughout the boreal hemisphere and includes over 100 species.
The service tree (Sorbus domestica L.) is a deciduous, broad-leaved plant with decidedly slow growth, a feature that nonetheless allows it to outlast the centuries and become a tree many hundreds of years old. The fruits are the sorbs: harvested in autumn, they are eaten after a process that transforms the tannins and increases the sugars; they were widely consumed in the past but have now sadly fallen into almost total disuse.
In the Pope’s Orchard it is brought back as a historic, now-forgotten species of the Tusculan territory: grown without synthetic chemicals, with shallow roots (within 1.5 m) so as not to interfere with the archaeology below.
Cultivars present
Sorbo domestico
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