The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Shrubs And Trees
VIBURNUM Lcntago, the Sheep-berry or Nanny-berry, is a handsome native shrub or small tree sometimes to 30 feet high, but mostly remaining lower in cultivation. It inhabits in nature comfortably moist, light woodlands and streambanks and adapts itself less happily to dry soils in cultivation than does V. pruntfolium.
Typically it forms a rather erect and not very wide shrub, bearing dull to slightly lustrous, green, oval to ob-oval leaves which take on red autumn colorings. The abundant, creamy-white, all-perfect flowers, in unstalked, domed cymes to 4 inches across, are distinctly effective in late May or early June, as is also the unripe, red stage of the fruit which matures in September into bluish-black.
The flowers are faintly, not unpleasantly scented.
This is a good shrub for large, naturalistic plantings, especially by way of a woodland facing, not so suitable as a large lawn specimen or for general use in the small home grounds.
V. rufidulum, the Southern Black Haw, has even more limited use because of its unpleasant odor but is, nevertheless, considered by many to be the handsomest of all the Viburnums. A bold, stiffly branched shrub for similar, naturalistic uses as V. Lentago, in moist situations; with dark-green, thick, blunter, lustrous foliage and clusters of white to creamy-white flowers, followed by ultimately blue-black fruit, borne simultaneously with those of V. Lentago.
A reddish fuzz on the winter buds, on the leaf-stalks and on the lower surfaces of the leaves characterizes this shrub. It forms a large bush or small tree to 20 feet high or more and is perfectly hardy.
V. prunifolium, our Northern Black Haw, less insistent upon moist soil, is more amenable to domestic landscape uses but, nevertheless, best suited for naturalistic effects. It is widely used in road-side and parkway plantings.
It makes a lower, spreading shrub to about 12 feet high, with thick, oval, mostly blunt-pointed, dark-green, smooth leaves which become wine-red in the autumn. It bears flat clusters of all-perfect, pure-white flowers in May and ripens blue-black, red-stalked fruit in the autumn.
V. setigerum (V. theiferum) is an Asiatic species which forms a large, round, solid shrub to about 12 x 12 feet, bearing narrowish, tapering, often somewhat shiny, drooping leaves and scarcely ornamental cymes of all perfect whitish flowers in June, followed by drooping clusters of red to scarlet fruit in the autumn, effectively displayed against the bronzy-purple autumn foliage.
This is one of the showiest of the Viburnums for fruit, especially in the variety aurantiacum, with orange-scarlet berries.
It is, however, a coarse-looking shrub, young plants more or less leggy eventually too large for border use and best reserved for spacious grounds. The winter buds of this species are a clear pink, so that cut twigs make a rather acceptable indoor winter decoration.
