Photo: Photo by David J. Stang — CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Survives zone 5 through 9
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Fruit ripens through a striking sequence of pink to blue to blackish-purple within the same cluster — edible and sweet once fully dark, with a raisin-like, slightly astringent flavor good fresh or cooked into preserves.
- Hardiness
- Zone 5–9
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Aug–Sept
- Mature size
- Shrub 2–4 m; containerable when young
- Light
- Full sun to partial
- Soil pH
- 5.5–7.0
- Environment
- Wetland
- Native range
- Eastern United States, from Connecticut south to Florida and Louisiana — low woods, swamps and bogs.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Medium
- Spacing
- 180 cm (71 in) apart — about 3.2 m² (35 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Opposite, elliptic to ovate leaves up to 9 cm long with a glossy upper surface, an acute tip, and margins entire or only faintly toothed.
- Root system
- Fibrous, fairly shallow root system well adapted to consistently moist to wet soils; suckers modestly from the base.
- Fruit description
- Drupes about 8–10 mm across held in showy clusters that ripen unevenly, passing through pink, red, and blue tones before finishing deep blue-black; flesh is sweet and raisin-like when fully ripe, with a single flat seed.
- Propagation
- By seed, which germinates readily but often not until the second spring after two rounds of stratification, or by hardwood and softwood cuttings taken from vigorous new growth.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile but BETTER WITH A PARTNER — plant 2 cultivars
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
How it spreads. Forms a broad, multi-stemmed clump with arching branches; spreads modestly by root suckers in consistently moist soil rather than aggressively colonizing.
Growing tips. More tolerant of wet, boggy soil than most other viburnums, making it well suited to rain gardens and pond margins; it also handles average garden soil once established. Full sun brings the heaviest fruit set and best fall color, though it tolerates part shade. Watch for viburnum leaf beetle where present.
Grow journal
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