This European Snowball Viburnum is an old-fashioned plant that was used more in the early and mid-20th century than now in the Midwestern and Eastern USA. It was known in Europe since the 16th century. It still is offered by many cheap mail order nurseries and some conventional nurseries. It does bear a lot of 2 to 3 inch diameter rounded flower clusters of all sterile florets, so it never bears fruit and does not provide pollen and nectar to insects. It often is strongly bothered by aphids.
‘Mariesii’ honors Chelsea gardener Charles Maries (1851-1902).
Most wonderful fragrance. Handsome clean foliage with nice fall color. I enjoy the flower buds too. They look like little cauliflowers.
I prefer to call this species the Smooth Viburnum, as it is normally hairless and smooth, except for some hairiness on young twigs for awhile. It gets the name of "arrowwood" because it bears some very straight stems that were used by natives for arrows. Its native range is from coastal Massachusetts down the East Coast into northern Florida then to most of Louisiana and a spot of east Texas; inland areas of southeast Pennsylvania, much of Ohio, eastern Kentucky & Tennessee & north Georgia, and a spot in Arkansas and one in Missouri, growing in bogs, bottomlands, and along watercourses. It grows about 1.5 feet/year. Its sort of rounded leaves with big teeth get to about 4.5 inches long by 4 inches wide and develop a fall color from pale yellow to orange to red to red-purple. Several cultivars have in recent times been selected for better fall color and for being less leggy than the mother species. The creamy white flower clusters get to 5 inches wide and have a slight stinky smell. The bluish-black to black fruit are oval-rounded drupes borne in fall and greatly loved by birds. The birds do seed some plants around in my yard and I have dug up such seedlings and given them to the neighbors. This is a reliable, basically neat, clean plant that is used somewhat commonly to commonly by landscape designers, and even a few homeowners buy some to be screens in their yards. There are a few very similar species to this that I have hardly ever seen, but they are the Bracted Arrowwood (V. bracteatum), the Downy Arrowwood (V. rafinesquianum), and the Kentucky Arrowwood (V. molle).
I have a 'Blue Muffin" in my garden near Seattle, for maybe 5 years. It is perfectly healthy and perfectly drought tolerant, and tolerates saturated clay all winter on a slight slope (no standing water). It is MUCH larger than the label stated, it is over 8 feet tall now and growing fast, also it suckers, has become a thicket, and the branches splay out and take root where they touch the ground. It is probably 14 feet across, even with yearly pruning of the sides. I cannot imagine why they said this is a small cultivar, it is a monster shrub.
This American Cranberrybush Viburnum is barely different than the European variety. (They were once considered as similar species, but I think this merging is good. The American variety has slightly larger leaves to 5 inches, with longer less toothed lobes, and small dome-shaped, usually stalked glands on the petiole (versus a few larger disc-like glands of a concave nature. The American species gets a better autumn color more towards orange and red, its flower clusters are a little larger to 4.5 inches wide, and its red fruits are a little less tart. Its native range is from Nova Scotia though southeast Canada over the Great Lakes to southern Manitoba; New England, most of New York, northern New Jersey, northwest Pennsylvania, northern Ohio, Michigan, northern Illinois, Wisconsin, and northern Minnesota in bogs, swamps, along watercourses, and upland on slopes and banks. It grows about 1.5 feet/year. It has a shallow, fibrous root system and is easy to transplant. For some crazy reason, the European Cranberry Viburnum was planted way more than the American for a long time, but the American variety is a little better ornamental and being native it is more useful to good native wildlife and insects. There are some cultivars with larger fruit used for making jams and jellies.
Blackhaw Viburnum usually is a shrub-tree about 15 to 20 feet high in landscapes, but it can be a small tree of 20 to 35 feet high. Its native range is from southeast New York & Connecticut down to central Alabama to northern Arkansas & most of Missouri, Illinois-Indiana-Ohio and southern Michigan through most of Pennsylvania & New Jersey back to beginning, in upland sites. It is very similar to the Nannyberry Viburnum, but is a larger plant with smaller, more rounded leaves usually about 2 inches long, and smaller gray naked pointed buds, and it has sharp spur branchlets that hurt when bumped into, thus called a "haw" or Black Hawthorn. It is a handsome, high quality small tree that is sold by larger, diverse nurseries and native plant nurseries, and is used occasionally by landscape designers in parks, campuses, public properties, office parks, and such. I've seen it growing wild in various locations in southeast Pennsylvania usually in woodland edges. It grows about 1.5 feet/year and lives about 60 to 100 years. Its root system is shallow and fibrous and it is easy to transplant. This clean, neat small tree should be used a lot more in landscapes.
Supposedly borderline hardy in the Northern UK, this one has cheerfully survived two winters with prolonged cold spells with temperatures down to -14C. It hasn't "batted an eyelid" and has flowered and grown as if this was normal. The secret may be in the excellent (excessive!) drainage of our light, stoney soil, which has meant its roots didn't suffer too much, and in the situation in the semi-shade in the lee of other taller plants and a latticework fence, which protect it from our biting winds.
Valuable source of nectar and pollen for honey bees.
This Burkwood Viburnum is a hybrid species (V. x burkwoodii) between the Koreanspice Viburnum x the Service Viburnum (V. utile), the latter being an evergreen straggly shrub from central China. It has dark green semi-evergreen leaves that often get a good fall color late of yellow-orange-red. It was developed in England at the Burkwood & Skipwith Nursery in 1914. It has very fragrant white flower clusters like the Koreanspice, but it is a larger shrub that is sort of straggly with smaller, really dark green leaves. It is one of the scurfy Viburnums with rough, hairy twigs and buds. Some are sold at many larger, diverse nurseries. This hybrid species is used much more by landscape architects and designers than the general public.
