Page 54 - MNLGA Free State Winter 2025

GROWING WITH EDUCATION (Continued)

flowers with bright yellow anthers shape with 3 lobes with pointed tips, leaves that turn red to maroon to
are packed onto a flat-topped cyme 2-5 inches long with a rounded base. burgundy in autumn but will remain
with larger pure white sterile flowers In the autumn they turn yellow to red evergreen in USDA zones 7-8. It is
bordering the outside, creating a or red-purple. considered a very desirable plant as
lace-cap. Pollinators love the fertile There are other wonderful viburnums it blooms early with red flower buds
flowers. The fruit is bright red to from other parts of the world that that stay colorful for up to 2 weeks
dark burgundy berries or drupes have been brought to us for their before opening to sweetly spicy
that look a lot like cranberries. Each diverse and ornamental qualities. fragrant white flowers arranged in 2–3-
drupe has a single seed, which can Some are valuable in the landscape inch snowball clusters. The flowers
stay on the trees from September to for their compact size, others for their will last up to 2 weeks then mature
February, and is edible to humans, beautiful and often sweetly scented into clusters of red berries that ripen
deer, cedar waxwings and other flowers, while others have dramatic black in late summer. This cultivar
birds, chipmunks, foxes, grouse, mice, displays of fruit that brightens the also has resistance to leaf spots and
moose, pheasants, rabbits, raccoons, winter landscapes. powdery mildew.
robins, skunks and squirrels. Quite Viburnum x carlcephalum is also
often the birds will wait until the fruit Viburnum x burkwoodii ‘Mohawk’ or known as the fragrant snowball.
has been frozen then thawed a few Burkwood Viburnum is a compact, It grows as a multistemed open
times before they devour them. The multiple stemmed, densely branched rounded shrub that grows 6-10
dark green leaves are named for their shrub that grows 8 feet tall and 5 feet tall and wide. It is considered a
-7 feet wide with glossy dark green
desirable plant for the fragrant dense
flowers that start out as pink buds,
then open to 5–6-inch round cymes
to look like large snowballs in spring.
The flowers mature into clusters of
bright red drupes which ripen black
but are not very showy. The 3–4-inch
deciduous leaves are green-gray and
egg shaped with star shaped hairs on