Audubon® Native Blackhaw Viburnum Big

The most treelike of our native Viburnums, Blackhaw Viburnum makes a grand specimen, and it is even more beautiful when songbirds are flitting among its branches, dining on the sweet black fruits. Robins, catbirds, bluebirds, cardinals, Cedar Waxwings, vireos, Purple Finches, flycatchers, and White-Throated Sparrows are some of the many birds that are known to feed on the berries. Homo sapiens may forage on them, too—sometimes making them into jelly when there’s a bumper crop! A treat for you as well as the birds, Blackhaw Viburnum will paint a pretty picture in your garden with its frosty white flowers in late spring and with its burgundy foliage in fall.

Blackhaw Viburnum is native to much of the eastern United States and is especially abundant in the Lower Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic States. You may encounter it on a hike through the woods or near thickets in those areas. Blackhaw Viburnum supports local wildlife not only with the berries it bears. Many moths lay their eggs on this species, such as the brown scoopwing, common pug, pink prominent, crocus geometer, and horrid zale. In spring, the delightfully fragrant flowers nourish native insects, such as mason bees, cuckoo bees, miner bees, hoverflies, butterflies, and hummingbird moths.

Left to its own devices, Blackhaw Viburnum typically becomes a large, dense, suckering shrub (which makes for great bird habitat). However, it can be trained to one trunk and grown as a tree. It may get even larger when grown this way. The national champion Blackhaw Viburnum, in Virginia, is 35 feet tall and has a trunk that’s two feet thick.