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Viburnum cassinoides L.

Withe-rod

Modern name

Viburnum cassinoides L.

A deciduous shapely bush of rounded form, rarely more than 6 to 8 ft high in Britain, but said to be occasionally a small tree in the southern United States; young wood scurfy. Leaves ovate to oval with a short, slender, often bluntish apex, rounded or wedge-shaped at the base, 112 to 412 in. long, 34 to 214 in. wide, irregularly and shallowly round-toothed, or merely wavy at the margin, thick and firm in texture, dull dark green and glabrous or nearly so above, somewhat scurfy beneath; stalk scurfy, 14 to 34 in. long. Flowers all uniform and perfect, yellowish white, e in. wide, produced in early June in cymes 2 to 4 in. across, the main-stalk of which is shorter than the branching portion. Fruits blue-black when ripe.

Native of eastern N. America; introduced, according to Aiton, in 1761. There is much confusion between this species and V. nudum (q.v.), but V. cassinoides has dull green leaves and very scurfy young shoots, leaf-stalks, and flower-stalks, and a short-stalked inflorescence. In V. nudum the leaves are glossy, the shoots, etc., comparatively free from scurf, and the inflorescence usually long-stalked.

V. cassinoides is one of the finest American viburnums. The leaves, chocolate-or bronze-tinted when young turn bright red before they fall, and the fruits as they mature pass from green to pink or red and finally to dark blue.


Genus

Viburnum

Other species in the genus