A bushy tree, 20°—30° high, with a short trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, slender rather pendulous branches forming a compact round-topped head, and thin divergent branchlets light green, slightly covered with rufous pubescence when they first appear, and in their first winter light red, scurfy, marked by occasional dark orange-colored lenticels and by narrow leaf-scars displaying 3 conspicuous fibro-vascular bundle-scars, becoming in their second year dark reddish brown and sometimes covered with a glaucous bloom. Winter-buds light red, generally covered with pale scurfy pubescence, those containing flower-bearing branchlets ¾′ in length, abruptly contracted into long narrow tapering points. Bark of the trunk reddish brown and irregularly broken into small thick plates divided on their surface into minute thin appressed scales. Wood bad-smelling, heavy, hard, close-grained, dark orange-brown, with thin nearly white sapwood.
Distribution. Rocky hillsides, along the borders of forests, or near the banks of streams and the margins of swamps, in moist soil; valley of the Rivière du Loup, Province of Quebec, to Saskatchewan, and southward through the northern states to southern Pennsylvania, central Ohio, northern Indiana and southern Wisconsin, northeastern Iowa and eastern Nebraska, and along the Appalachian Mountains up to altitudes of 2500° to West Virginia; on the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota, the Black Hills of South Dakota, on the eastern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming and on those of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado (Boulder, Boulder County).
Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern United States, and occasionally in Europe.
× Viburnum Jackii Rehd. with characters intermediate between Viburnum Lentago and V. prunifolium is now believed to be a hybrid between those species.
3. [Viburnum prunifolium] L. Black Haw. Stag Bush.
Leaves ovate or rarely obovate, oval or suborbicular, rounded, acute, or short-pointed at apex, cuneate or rounded at base, and usually rather remotely or sometimes finely serrate with rigid incurved callous-tipped teeth, lustrous and tinged with red, glabrous on the lower surface and covered on the upper side of the midrib and on the bright red petioles with scattered reddish hairs when they unfold, and at maturity thick or sometimes coriaceous, dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, pale and glabrous on the lower surface, 1′—3′ long and ½′—3′ wide, with slender primary veins connected by reticulate veinlets; in the autumn turning brilliant scarlet or dark vinous red before falling; petioles terete, grooved, ½′—⅔′ in length, and on vigorous shoots sometimes narrowly wing-margined. Flowers ¼′ in diameter on slender pedicels bibracteolate at apex, in glabrous short-stemmed flat cymes 2′—4′ in diameter, with subulate caducous bracts about 1/16′ long, usually red above the middle; corolla pure white, with oval to nearly orbicular lobes. Fruit ripening in October, in few-fruited red-stemmed clusters, persistent on the branches until the beginning of winter, oval or slightly obovoid, ½′—⅔′ long or rarely globose, dark blue and covered with a glaucous bloom; stone about ½′ long and ⅓′ wide.
A bushy tree, occasionally 20°—30° high, with a short and usually crooked trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, stout spreading rigid branches beset with slender spine-like branchlets, bright red and glabrous when they first appear, soon turning green, and in their first winter gray tinged with red, covered with a slight bloom, and marked by orange-colored lenticels and by the large lunate leaf-scars displaying 3 fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and ultimately dark brown tinged with red; or often a low intricately branched shrub. Winter-buds short-pointed or obtuse, brown, glabrous or scurfy, those containing flower-bearing branches about ½′ long and ¼′ wide, and about twice as large as those containing sterile branchlets. Bark of the trunk ¼′—⅓′ thick, and broken into thick irregularly shaped plate-like red-brown scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, brittle, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with thick nearly white sapwood of 20—30 layers of annual growth.
Distribution. Dry rocky hillsides, fence-rows and the sides of roads; Fairfield County, Connecticut, and the valley of the lower Hudson River, New York, southward to southeastern Virginia and to the Coast and Piedmont regions of North and South Carolina up to altitudes of 2000° to the valley of the Savannah River (near Augusta, Georgia, Richmond County, rare), and through southern Ohio to Indiana, southern Illinois, southern and western Kentucky, Missouri and eastern Kansas; very abundant in Missouri from the northeastern counties southward through the state.
Often cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the eastern United States, and occasionally in western and northern Europe.