This three-season powerhouse provides abundant flowers, colorful foliage, and high wildlife value. Its rounded, multi-stemmed form bears copper-colored leaves in spring that change to dark green in summer and brilliant reddish-purple in fall (prunifolium refers to the leaves’ resemblance to plum leaves). A member of the honeysuckle (caprifoliaceae) family, this shrub’s flat-topped clusters of creamy-white flowers are pleasingly fragrant. The blooms give way to sweet, edible berries that are eaten by wildlife and humans. Given adequate drainage and ample sunlight, blackhaw viburnum is a low-maintenance shrub. It thrives in dry or moist loamy soils and adapts to sandy or clay soils with good drainage. It typically grows 15-20 feet tall and nearly as wide, but it can reach 30 feet in height. Best blooms and fruiting occur when the plant receives at least six hours of sunlight. A single viburnum will consistently produce flowers, but cross pollination is necessary for reliable fruit production. Two or three shrubs will supply an ample crop of berries. Commonly used in domestic landscapes, blackhaw viburnum tolerates air pollution and proximity to black walnut trees. As the branches can become dense and unruly, this shrub benefits from occasional pruning immediately after flowering. The black, berry-like drupes often persist into winter and are extremely attractive to birds and other wildlife.
 
Songbirds prefer berries from native plants over berries from non-native plants. Several research studies have shown that native rather than non-native berries are more nutritious for birds. Due to chemicals in non-native plants that our songbirds haven’t evolved to easily digest, migrating birds consuming non-native berries often lose weight, while birds consuming mostly native berries tend to gain weight.
 
Native habitats include moist woods, low to upland wood edges, thickets, roadsides, and stream banks. Use viburnum in landscapes massed as a hedge or screen, in mixed borders, in the back of a native planting, or featured as a small specimen tree.
 
Plant Characteristics:
Most commonly grows to 15-20’ tall and 6–12’ wide.
 
Prefers full to part sun. Does not bloom well in shade.
 
Grows in a range of dry to moist, well-drained soils, including sandy, loamy, lightly rocky, or clay.
 
Clusters of flowers 3-5” across bloom May-June. Each ¼” flower has 5 rounded petals, 5 long stamens with yellow anthers, and a small pistil with a creamy-colored base.
 
Yellow to red fruits turn blue-black when ripe. Each drupe contains a single stone (a seed with a hard coat) that is flat on one side and convex on the other.
 
Ovate, finely toothed leaves are up to 3” long, thick and leathery, and dark green, changing to maroon in the fall.
 
Bark is brown-gray and smooth in young plants and gray-black with rough, flat-topped plates in older plants. Trunk may be single or multi-stemmed.
 
Wildlife Value:
Viburnums are a host plant for 101 species of Lepidoptera, including hummingbird and snowberry clearwing moths and several silk moths (Io and cecropia pictured here, preceded by their caterpillars). The nectar and pollen of the flowers attract primarily small bees and flies, including cuckoo bees, mason bees, halictid bees, andrenid bees, syrphid flies, dance flies, bee flies, tachinid flies, blow flies, and muscid flies. Other flower visitors include butterflies, skippers, moths, and ants, which seek nectar. A viburnum leaf beetle feeds on the leaves. The fruits are eaten by migrating and overwintering birds, wild turkeys, ruffed grouse, Eastern chipmunk, tree squirrels, and the white-footed mouse. Deer browse on the twigs and leaves.
 
Medicinal, Edible, and Other Uses:
Native Americans and early European settlers used the root and tree bark as an astringent, a diuretic, a sedative, an antispasmodic, and a nerve tonic. A bark tea was used for treating asthma, malaria, dysentery, convulsions, epilepsy, and uterine infections. A leaf poultice was used for skin cancer, and the fruits were used for preventing and treating scurvy.
 
Mature fruit may be eaten raw or can be used to make wine, jams, and preserves.
 
The bark was smoked like tobacco.