Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

Nannyberry can grow into a small tree, but is normally an understory plant of moist woods. In the landscape the plant can be leggy and will send up suckers.

Bark on mature stems is dark reddish-gray to black with a few warty bumps and becoming scaly with age. Young stems can also have a rusty-brown downy appearance. The flower buds that form on the tips of last years twigs are distinctive with a round base tapering to a long pointed spire.

Leaves are shiny dark green above, 2 to 4 inches long, egg shaped with fine teeth and usually pointed at the tip. They are in opposite pairs on the twigs. Newly emerged leaves are downy. Leaf stalks are reddish with small wings. Fall color (with sun) is a nice maroon.

The inflorescence is a round topped cluster (cyme) 3 to 5 inches across of small 5-parted white flowers. These rise from terminal buds of the prior years growth. The cyme appears with the leaves.

Flowers have 5 protruding stamens with yellow anthers, that are placed alternate to the 5 lobes of the white corolla. The pistil has a short thick green style. The calyx remains green, has five teeth at the tip, which persist onto the fruit.

Fruit: Flowers mature into bluish-black edible oval drupes, about 1/3 inch wide, that hang from reddish stems. The drupes contain a single large stone seed that occupies much of the volume of the drupe. The ripe fruit is eaten by many birds and animals usually after it has frozen and thawed as the fruit then turns sweet. Over ripe fruit smells like wet sheep wool, hence one of the alternate common names of Sheepberry. Humans will find the fruit barely palatable. Cooking has not found it any better.

Habitat: The preferred habitat is moist soil in low woods or swamp borders, but it can tolerate drier sites. The plant is susceptible to damage by the viburnum leaf beetle (Pyrrhalta viburni ), but usually the leaves are not bothered by insects (more notes below).

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 covers a large number of shrubs and the name is an old Latin name for one particular member of the genus. The species, lentago, comes from another Latin word meaning 'flexible' and was assigned by Linnaeus as the twigs are very tough and flexible. 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 Viburnums that may look similar at first glance. Compare Arrowwood, Viburnum dentatum L., and American Cranberrybush, Viburnum opulus L. var. americanum Aiton.