Japanese Snowball               vi-BER-num pli-KA-tum

• Deciduous shrub, 8-15 ft (2.1-4.5 m), equal width, arching, horizontal branches.  Leaves opposite, simple, 7.5-15 cm long, half as wide, ovate, coarsely serrate, pubescent underneath, turn purplish in fall.  Flowers white, sterile, in spherical clusters, 5-7.5 cm diam., borne in opposite rows along horizontal branches.  No fruit is formed.
• Sun to part shade, less susceptable to aphids than V. opulus.
• Hardy to USDA Zone 4      Native to China and Japan, known only in cultivation.
• The taxonomic type that was the basis for first naming this species (V. plicatum) was the sterile, garden form, V. plicatum var. plicatum (Japanese Snowball).  Later the wild, fertile, type of the species, V. plicatium var. tomentosum (Doublefile Viburnum), was named as a separate form because it was discovered by European botanists later (Flint, 1999).
• Several cultivars are available, including:
  •  Newport®  -  dwarf, compact habit.
  • ‘Pink Sensation’  -  pink flowers.
• Corvallis: older specimen in front of "Bexell House" at 767 Jefferson.