Viburnum cassinoides (syn. V. nudum var. cassinoides)
Withrod Viburnum, Northern Wild Raisin
- Broadleaf deciduous shrub, rather large, to 6-10 ft (1.8-3 m) tall with a similar spread, multi-stemmed, but
sometimes a small tree, dense compact and rounded form. Leaves opposite, simple, elliptic, ovate
or oblong, 4-10 cm long, 2-5.5 cm wide, tip acute or bluntly pointed, base rounded or wedge-shaped, margin
irregularly and shallowly round- serrate, dull dark green, but chocolate or bronze-tinted when young, lower
surface nearly glabrous (without hairs) but somewhat scurfy (covered with small branlike scales).
Flowers yellow-white, about 5 mm across, fertile, in dense, flat-topped clusters (cymes) 12 cm wide.
Fruit ovoid to subglobose, 7 mm long, initially green then turning pink, then red, later blue, and finally black in fall; often ripening is not
symphonized and all the fruit colors may be present in a single cluster.
- Sun to part shade.
- Hardy to USDA Zone 2 Native to range from Newfoundland to Manitoba and Minnesota,
south to Georgia.
- Witherod, withe rod or withe-rod: comes from the former use of its branches for switches by old-time
schoolmasters (Zucker, 1995). Withe: Old English word for a flexible twig.
- cassinoides: resembling Ilex cassine, Dahoon Holly. Native to the eastern
United States from Virginia to Florida to Louisiana.