Cormus domestica

The service tree is deciduous and grows (rarely ) tall with a trunk up to diameter, though it can also be a shrub tall on exposed sites. The bark is brown, smooth on young trees, becoming scaly and rough on older trees. The winter buds are green, with a sticky, resinous coating. The leaves are long, pinnate with 13–21 leaflets long and broad. The leaves have a bluntly acute apex, and a serrated margin on the outer half or two thirds of the leaflet. The margin of the leaflets is et with slender teeth, except towards the base, which is entire, glabrous above and more or less downy beneath, becoming glabrous or nearly so by autumn. The flowers are diameter, with five white petals and 20 creamy-white stamens; they are produced in corymbs diameter in late spring, and are hermaphrodite and insect pollinated. The fruit is a human-edible pome called the "serviceberry" that is long, greenish-brown, and often tinged red on the side exposed to sunlight; it can be either apple-shaped (f. pomifera (Hayne) Rehder) or pear-shaped (f. pyrifera (Hayne) Rehder). ==Ecology==

Cormus domestica is generally rare, listed as an endangered species in Switzerland and Austria, and uncommon in Spain. In the UK, one very old tree that existed in the Wyre Forest before being destroyed by fire in 1862 used to be considered native, but it is now generally considered to be more likely of cultivated origin, probably from a mediaeval monastery orchard planting. It is a long-lived tree, with ages of 300–400 years estimated for some in Britain. ==Cultivation and uses==

The fruit is a component of a cider-like drink which is still made in parts of Europe. Picked straight off the tree, it is highly astringent and gritty; however, when left to blet (overripen) it sweetens and becomes pleasant to eat. In the Moravian Slovakia region of the Czech Republic, there is a community-run museum with an educational trail and a festival for this tree, with products like jam, juice and brandy made from its fruit. The sorb tree is cited in the Babylonian Talmud in Ketubot 79a. The example refers in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic to a "thicket of zardəṯā" (). In ancient Greece, the fruit was cut in half and pickled, which in Plato's Symposium (190d7-8) has Aristophanes use as a metaphor for the cutting in half of the original spherical humans by Zeus. Service tree wood was often used for manufacturing wooden planes of all types used for working wood, because servicetree wood is fairly dense and holds a profile well. ==Etymology and other names==

The English name comes from Middle English serves, plural of serve, from Old English syrfe, borrowed from the Latin name sorbus; it is unrelated to the verb serve. Other English names include sorb, sorb tree, and whitty pear—"whitty" because the leaves are similar to rowan (i.e. pinnate), and "pear" due to the shape of the fruit. The name sorb, likewise, is from the Latin sorbus; because of its fruit and has nothing to do with the Slavic ethnic groups known as the Sorbs and Serbs. ==References==