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Northern Ontario Plant Database |
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Plant Description
Viburnum cassinoides L.
northern wild raisin, witherod, swamp haw; Fr: alisier, viorne cassinoïde, bleuets sains; Ojibway (Anishinabe): bagwaji-zhoominens, zhoominensan
Adoxaceae - Viburnum Family
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General: an upright, deciduous shrub, 1–4 m tall. The rough-textured (scurfy) terminal and lateral buds are composed of two, elongate and flexible bud scales, covered with small, rusty-coloured peltate scales. Leaf buds are long and narrow, flower buds are rounded at the base, abruptly narrowed above. Young twigs are also scurfy, but older bark is smooth and gray. An excellent addition to a native plant garden, this shrub offers large showy flowers in early to mid summer, colourful fruits that attract birds in late summer, and attractive foliage, dark glossy green in summer and bright orange to red in fall.
Leaves: Opposite, simple, firm to leathery (coriaceous), pinnately-veined, petiolate. Leaves of northern wild raisin are very variable, ranging in shape from narrowly elliptic to obovate, but lanceolate to elliptic leaves are most common. Leaf blades are 2.5–15 cm long and 1.5–6 cm wide; smooth (glabrous), dark green and lustrous above, or sometimes with a dull bloom, and slightly paler beneath; leaf base is tapering (cuneate) to rounded; the apex blunt (obtuse), sometimes abruptly narrowing before the blunt tip; margins are entire, wavy, or toothed (serrate); petioles 0.5–2 cm long. Leaves turn red in the fall.
Flowers: Bisexual, white, with a slightly disagreeable odour, arranged in large, terminal and stalked, flat-topped clusters (cymes), 3–10 cm across. All flowers of the inflorescence are fertile and approximately the same size. Calyx small, inconspicuous; corolla of 5 petals, fused at the base; stamens 5, sticking up (exerted) 1–3.5 mm above the corolla; the single pistil with an inferior ovary. Flowers bloom in early summer.
Fruit: An ovoid, berry-like drupe, 6–9 mm long, with 1 seed inside the stony pit; white, becoming bright pink, then bluish-black, with a heavy bloom and wrinkled when mature. Edible, with sweet pulp; ripening in mid to late summer.
Habitat and Range: Moist to wet open woods, thickets, and swamps throughout the mixedwood and southern boreal forest, extending from Newfoundland through northeastern Ontario.
Nomenclatural Notes: Viburnum cassinoides L. is sometimes considered to be a northern, upland subspecies (Viburnum nudum subsp. cassinoides (L.) Torr. & A.Gray) of the broader (formerly southeastern) U.S. species, Viburnum nudum L., known as the naked witherod, possumhaw, swamphaw, smooth witherod, or southern wild raisin. However, the status of this union has recently been questioned, so the NOPD has retained the name Viburnum cassinoides until the relationship between these two taxa has been clarified.
The former Caprifoliaceae (Honeysuckle Family) has been split into several new families, including the Adoxaceae (Adoxa, Sambucus, Viburnum), Diervillaceae (Diervilla, Weigela), and Linnaeaceae (Linnaea, Abelia, and Kolkwitzia). The new Caprifoliaceae includes only the genera Lonicera (honeysuckles), Symphoricarpos (snowberry), and Triosteum (horse-gentian). For up-to-date information on nomenclatural changes at the family level, see the Missouri Botanical Garden's Angiosperm Phylogeny Website.
Similar Species: Viburnum lentago (nannyberry) occurs near the Minnesota Border in northwestern Ontario, southwest of Lake Nipissing in northeastern Ontario, and throughout southern and eastern Ontario. It can be recognized by its sessile inflorescence of sweet-smelling flowers, its finely serrate (serrulate) leaf margins, and its scurfy gray winter buds. See the Viburnum lentago webpage from the Gallery of Connecticut Wildflowers, a website of the Connecticut Botanical Society.
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