Trees & Shrubs of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

Stems: Arrowwood is a multi-stemmed upright shrub growing to 9 feet high and almost the same in diameter making a rounded mass with arching branches.

Twigs are slender, angled with ridges, sometimes downy when young and then hairless with age. Buds are green to brown with several scales. Older stems are grayish with fissures showing the underlying reddish-brown tissue. The surface has warty protrusions.

Leaves are opposite, on short stalks without stipules, rounded to lanceolate in shape (broadest just below the middle), up to 4 inches long. Margins have sharp coarse teeth. Tips vary from pointed to rounded. Dark green above, dull under with some hair in star shaped tufts beneath and on the stalks. Leaves turn reddish in the fall. The leaves subtending the flower cluster have stalks at least 9/32 inches (7mm) long; the leaf stalk does not have a stipule; both of those characteristics separates the species from V. rafinesquianum.

The inflorescence is a branched, flat-topped cluster (a corymb), 2 to 4 inches wide, at the terminal end of new stem growth. Each cluster will have 5 to 7 flat-topped sub-groups. At the base of the corymb is a small green bract, one for each branch, then each corymb branch has its own bract.

Flowers: The 5-part flowers are small, less than 1/4 inch wide with the corolla tube spreading its 5 white lobes outward to a bell shape. The inside of the tube is sometimes with hair. There are 5 protruding stamens with yellow anthers. The stigma of the style is three-lobed. The base of the style has fine hair. The calyx is short, green to yellow-green on the five pointed lobes of the tip.

Fruit: The flowers mature to a rounded drupe (berry-like fruit), up to 1/4 inch in diameter that is green initially and turns bluish-black at maturity and bears a single seed. Seeds germinate only after having a cold moist period, followed by a warm moist period, followed by another cold moist period, each period of at least 60 days. If sown, they will germinate in the second year.

Habitat: Arrowwood grows best in loamy soil with adequate moisture in full sun to partial sun in open woods, wood edges and stream banks. It tends to sucker from the base but in an open space, forms a nice rounded form. It has a fibrous root system and is easily transplanted. Propagation of new plants is from seed or vegetative cuttings.

Names: In the never ending quest for specificity, botanists have recently moved the Viburnum genus into the Adoxaceae plant family, which is a small group of 5 genera of shrubs that have opposite leaves, mostly 5-petaled flowers that produce a small drupe. Minnesota authorities have made this change, USDA has not yet. The genus Viburnum is the Latin name for a European species of this genus. The species name dentatum, means 'toothed' - as per the leaves. In Eloise Butler's day the plant was also known as Viburnum pubescens and several other names now consolidated into the present classification. The common name of Arrowwood refers to the Native American use of straight stems for arrows. The author name for the plant classification - 'L.' is for Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish botanist and the developer of the binomial nomenclature of modern taxonomy.

Comparisons: There are a number of species of Viburnum and varieties of this plant. The full name of this species is Viburnum dentatum L. var. dentatum - not native to the state. The Arrowwood native to Minnesota is V. rafinesquianum, Downy Arrowwood, where the leaf stalks have stipules and the leaf stalks subtending the flower cluster are 9/32" (7mm) or less in length.