Southern arrowwood, a pollinator & bird-friendly, easy-to-grow shrub

The beautiful flower heads attract a wide array
of pollinators, including this yellow
tiger swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus).

Southern arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum) should be planted more often. It’s a medium-sized shrub that attracts pollinators with its flowers and feeds birds with its blue berries in the fall. It's also the larval host for the spring azure butterfly (Celastrina ladon).  This is a wonderful choice to add habitat to your landscape. (See my article on habitat gardening.) 

It grows well in a variety of conditions, from full sun to partial shade, and a variety of soil types. It does best along pond edges and low areas, including rain gardens, but not where it’s really dry. It's low maintenance, once established, but it tolerates trimming.

It can be planted as part of a hedgerow or as part of a grove or thicket around trees with other native shrubs. It tends to sucker and spread by rhizome, so plan for this.

Flowers & Fruit of Virburnums

The beautiful white flower heads are compound umbels formed at the ends or tops of the shoots, so they only are borne on new wood, so keep this in mind if you feel the need to trim them--do so only in early winter well before the spring growth. The fruit is a drupe. A typical drupe is a peach--a seed surrounded by fruit. There are two-seeded drupes like coffee, but most drupes have one seed. 

Those long straight shoots or suckers were used as arrow shafts by indigenous peoples of the Americas. Hence the name, arrowwood. 

The blue fruit are drupes and are readily eaten by birds late summer into fall.

Flowers/fruits are borne in a compound umbel at the ends of branches and shoots.

In the Landscape

We have several of these shrubs in our yard, most are near the front pond, where they tend to be quite a bit taller than dryer parts of the yard. One is almost 20 feet tall. The others around the property are generally 6 to 10 feet tall. I've never purchased any--they are all naturally occurring, except for one that I transplanted several years ago. 

I transplanted this shrub into a natural swale several years ago. It has spread wider, but has not grown more than 3 feet tall. My husband trimmed off the top a few years ago, but that should not have prevented further upward growth in subsequent years.

Botanists disagree on several aspects of this plant

A) What is the plant family?

Many reliable sources say the family is Viburnaceae or Adoxaceae along with the elderberries (Sambucus spp.) and adoxa (Adoxa spp.). An older classification had these three genera in the honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae. Both The Atlas of Florida Plants and Kew Gardens agree on Viburnaceae, but many other reliable sources say it's Adoxaceae.

In looking at the elerberry, you can see the similarity, especially the flower heads.

The elderberry (Sambucus nigra subsp. canadensis) has similar flowers and taxonomists place them in the same family as the Viburnums.

The elderberry fruit hangs upside down and is sometimes used to make wine, if it's harvested before the birds eat them.

B) Should southern arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum) be divided into several different species?

USDA range map for southern arrowwood.

The Atlas of Florida Plants, the USDA, and many others say that the range is from Maine to Texas including North Florida.

But the Atlas of Florida Plants included this:

McAtee (1956) wrote “The dentatum complex is a highly variable one, with the characters intergrading in apparently all directions, yet it seems best to recognize a number of species in it, difficult as occasional specimens, their identification may be.” and “There is no such thing as complete discontinuity in the dentatum group”. Three names were applied to Florida material: V. scabrellum, V. carolinianum, and V. pubescens

Kew Gardens showed a range that only went as far south as Tennessee. I wrote an email to them to ask about why their range was different than the others. This was their answer:

Dear Ginny,

I think that is old data. We will have to await the Flora of N. America account to be sure what the correct distribution is. Viburnum dentatum was a dumping ground for many species which have now been recognised as distinct and true Viburnum dentatum has a distribution centred around EC. U.S.A. See e.g.: https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/main.php?pg=show-taxon.php&plantname=Viburnum+dentatum 

https://newfs.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/Flora_Novae_Angliae_Addenda_22Nov22.pdf “Viburnum recognitum Fern. (Viburnaceae, smooth arrowwood) and V. venosum Britt. (veiny arrowwood) are being distinguished at the species level (i.e., as distinct from V. dentatum L.) based on differences in morphology, distribution, ecology, and phenology. Viburnum venosum flowers 2–3 weeks later than V. recognitum when populations of each are located close to one another. Their inclusion in the Viburnum key to the species is presented in the previous entry (couplet 12)” 

Regards,

Rafaël Govaerts

Senior Content Editor – Plant & Fungal Names Biodiversity Informatics & Spatial Analysis Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Jodrell Laboratory, Kew Road TW9 3DS, United Kingdom

But now their range includes both South Carolina and Georgia. So stay tuned, Viburnum dentatum may be divided into separate species in the future, but whatever the botanists say, this is still a wonderful shrub and should be planted more often in our yards and in our communities. The pollinators and the birds will thank us. 

Viburnums native to Florida

I've listed them with links to their FNPS plant profiles, which have more information, photos, native range in Florida, and a FANN link to find native plant organizations that have them in stock. 

- Maple leaf viburnum (V. acerifolium)
- Southern arrowwood (V. dentatum) 
- Possum haw (V. nudum)
- Walter's virburnum (V. obovatum)
- Southern Black Haw (V. rufidulum)

So I hope you add some easy-to-grow southern arrowwood and maybe some other native Viburnums to your yard and in your community to add to the local habitat.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt