Withrod Viburnum, Northern Wild Raisin                vi-BUR-num kas-i-NOY-dez

• Broadleaf deciduous shrub, rather large, to 6-10 ft (1.8-3 m) tall with a similar spread, multi-stemmed, but sometimes a small tree, dense compact and rounded form.  Leaves opposite, simple, elliptic, ovate or oblong, 4-10 cm long, 2-5.5 cm wide, tip acute or bluntly pointed, base rounded or wedge-shaped, margin irregularly and shallowly round- serrate, dull dark green, but chocolate or bronze-tinted when young, lower surface nearly glabrous (without hairs) but somewhat scurfy (covered with small branlike scales).    Flowers yellow-white, about 5 mm across, fertile, in dense, flat-topped clusters (cymes) 12 cm wide.   Fruit ovoid to subglobose, 7 mm long, initially green then turning pink, then red, later blue, and finally black in fall; often ripening is not symphonized and all the fruit colors may be present in a single cluster.
• Sun to part shade.
• Hardy to USDA Zone 2    Native to range from Newfoundland to Manitoba and Minnesota, south to Georgia.
• Witherod, withe rod or withe-rod: comes from the former use of its branches for switches by old-time schoolmasters (Zucker, 1995).  Withe: Old English word for a flexible twig.
• cassinoides: resembling Ilex cassine, Dahoon Holly.  Native to the eastern United States from Virginia to Florida to Louisiana.