FIELD ID CHARACTERISTICS:
Strictly a wetland species of Viburnum. Opposite branching with distinctive appressed or upright buds.
Description: Medium-sized deciduous shrub up to 5 m tall.
Leaves: Opposite leaves broad, elliptic or obovate with entire or slightly wavy margins. Leaves shiny green, leathery and widest at the middle, 5 to 10 cm long and 2 to 6 cm wide. Leaves often have a prominent white midvein.
Flowers/Fruit: Flowers appear in the typical "flat-topped" inflorescence (cyme) and fruits are compressed blue-black drupes, about 1 cm long. Blooms April/May; fruits August to October.
Habit and Range: Freshwater marshes and swamps, pocosins, wet flats, low woods throughout North Carolina, but especially blackwater floodplains in the Coastal Plain in acidic, stagnant water.
COMMON CONFUSIONS:
Viburnum nudum (possumhaw viburnum) has leaves similar to Cornus amomum (silky dogwood) which also has opposite leaves, but more rounded and less shiny leaves with minute, pressed down, brown hairs on leaf undersides. Viburnum nudum also has similar shiny leaves to Cephalanthus occidentalis (common buttonbush), which has distinctive elongated lenticels along branches.
Click here to view Cornus amomum.
Click here to view Cephalanthus occidentalis.
Link to side-by-side comparisons page
