Arrowwood Viburnum Anyone?

11 years ago

So, I'm designing this smallish shrub grouping and would really like to use one or more arrowwood viburnum cultivars. Meanwhile, the imported pest-viburnum leaf beetle-is yet another foreign insect making its way across the country. There are reports from
Wisconsin, near Milwaukee. I live and work 100 miles north of that city. So I ask, would I be a big fool-or just a little idiot-to still be planting this shrub in this composition? I've read and re-read all the pertinent info. I know of at least one very major grower in this state that has moved away from offering this plant. What think ye all? Anybody else here from the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes states with an opinion one way or the other?

Thanks...................+oM

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Comments (5)

WoodsTea 6a MO
11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
Hmm, that's too bad about the beetle. I'd been looking at planting a couple of V. dentatum this fall. UW Extension seems to think it's a bad idea there in Wisconsin:

http://hort.uwex.edu/articles/viburnum-leaf-beetle
wisconsitom
Original Author
11 years ago
Yeah, I was in communication with our University Extension Entomologist. The trend seems clear, the threat is real. This little task is within the stormwater mgt. vegetation portion of my job, and we nearly always select native plants for these projects, all the way up to and including selecting seed for meadow grasses and forbs from within a couple hundred miles. This location however, is in a straight-up residential neighborhood-nice houses were torn down to build this pond-and considerably more leeway applies in terms of plant palette. I don't mean by that that I ever feel limited by the natives-only aspect of this work, but that landscape nativars and even cultivars of non-natives may be used. In any case, it might be time to look at options.

+oM
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Just a comment: Viburnums are great shrubs. But if you are in certain areas of the east, do be on the watch for Viburnum leaf beetle, yet another new import that is decimating especially arrrowwood Viburnum in these areas. The good news is that it's super-easy to scout for the egg masses at this time of year, just before the plants leaf out. The egg masses are easily seen and can simply be scraped off and taken out of the area. The female will have laid them on twig ends. My state has recorded a couple sightings of this insect, to the south of where I operate. So I still went ahead and planted some arrowwoods for a recent project. One quick visit in early spring has assured me-and I expected this-that no Viburnum leaf beetles are present.
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Thanks all! I believe I was sent the wrong viburnum, but that’s okay. I’ve been plant shopping in my yard to id plants and shrubs that can tolerate a sunny bed by the garage that consists of heavy clay soil and is constantly wet, ranging from moist to water percolating up when you step on the ground. It seems like a good candidate for that spot. I dug up the lawn in that area about 4 years ago when we bought the house to establish a small wild flower bed (approx. 14’x 28’)). All was well for the first 2 years, then the spring rains began to be consistently torrential. For the most part, the wild flowers died except for yarrow and black eyed susan. Last year, I kind of gave up (my big project then was lawn renovation (had 75% weeds), trying to restore the understory of the woodland surrounding the lawn and screening out the view of neighbor’s heavy equipment graveyard with various shrubs including the viburnum oculus — there’s only so much you can do in a season!) and dumped a load of arborist wood chips on the front half of the bed and let the yarrow and black eyed susans run amok in the other half. This year’s primary project was to repurpose shrubs that were simply in the wrong place - they were fine for the first couple of years (I know this because we bought the place from our friends) but they were out of hand by the time we took over. My plan was to begin moving shrubs in March to take advantage of spring rains, but due to a serious illness in the family, I was not able to begin until mid-May. Now that it’s June and the rainy season is largely over, I thought focusing on the wet area would be practical. I put a couple of spirea in the moist section (Anthony Waterers) of the bed, but it seemed too wet for them (die back, yellowing leaves) so I moved them elsewhere. I think the viburnum oculus might be happy there. I also put in a Salix integra Hakuro Nishiki last weekend; I’ll be able to check its progress this weekend. I think some viburnum are difficult to id even when they have flowers. A friend gave me some viburnum babies from some shrubs that were there when she bought her house. She didn’t know what they were so I asked her to send a picture when they flowered. I think they might be Viburnum plicatum tomentosum ‘Mariesii’.
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While on tooic of viburnum and invasive viburnum leaf beetle (VLB): I have several native virburnum and this year they mercilessly attacked by that horrible beetle that can kill a viburnum in two years if not mitigated. My tiny cranberry viburnums were eaten down to the leaf veins. It was only then i realized the same thing had attacked my ”blue muffin” virburnums. The leaf damage is easy to ID as the beetles eat a uniform rectangular hole in the leaves. In that Cornell very helpful link above they tell how to mitigate and I write bc now/fall/winter/before leaf out is a great time to check for eggs in this year’s new stem growth. The beetle deposits eggs and pastes back paler chewed wood leaving again easily IDd rectangular shapes. Easy to see once leaves have fallen. I cut the tips off a blackhaw viburnum, the cranberries, and many stems of my arrowwood viburnums and threw the stems onto a fire. (Satisfying but also obv dont leave discarded egg laden stems in a brush pile etc.) I also got horticultural oil to rub on stems in spring as suggested maybe by the Cornell article or another academic journal. These mechanical methods work better and are obviously ecologically preferable to broader pesticide applications. PSA 2: Guelder rose (v. opulus/ Roseum/ european cranberry viburnum) is considered invasive in much of the US and hybridizes with our lovely native cranberry virbunum. it is unpalatable to animals and while pretty is not a great choice. Harder to find the native (and ”native” shrubs are often mislabled accidental hybirds w the European v. opulus—difficult to ID unless you taste the berries or closely examine leaf petioles) so only buy from very careful sources, I just had to yank some I bought online last year—frustrsting waste of $ but fortunately they were too small to flower and hybridize w my natives—but the hedges of invasive v. opulus crowd out our native plants and do not supply food once supplied by natives for songbirds etc. Forgive highjacking of thread and Im not a natives-only purist —in the case of virburnym youre better getting anither hybrid if you have bad infestation of VLB—by any means but that plant is particularly egregious especially where it is driving the far tastier native cranberry viburnum to dwindling populations. And the european and American cranberry viburnums are also on the highly susceptible to viburnum leaf beetles list mentioned above. PSA out. Mostly wrote this for pll who come across these threads in searches as I do—often finding useful info years later. ✌️
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wisconsitom
Original Author
11 years ago
Woods, et al, the very person referenced above sent me an email this morning, more or less urging me not to back away from planting this fine shrub. His reasoning-something I'd already considered-is the ease of control of this insect when on just a few plants. So, even though I do virtually no actual landscape maintenance in my job these days, it would not be unreasonable that a brief inspection or two in fall, winter, or early spring, to look for the "egg caps" on the twig ends could easily be managed. Think I'm going to go with my initial impulse, in that this group of plants is really the right one to go with the other items I have selected for this job. Even just applying Tanglefoot to the lower stems would completely block reinfestation should it occur, the larvae not dropping to the ground to pupate as so many insects do, but rather, crawling down the trunk, so to speak, to get to ground. That really suggests a simple management regime. Yeah!

+oM
Liz
11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
I am in central New Jersey, and the beetle has shown up in New York State, but I have gone ahead and planted Arrowwood. There are only two in my backyard, plus two viburnum nudum. So far so good, and I figure I can do control as you suggest in the wintertime if the beetles show up.

The variety deamii is very pretty, with larger glossy leaves.
wisconsitom
Original Author
11 years ago
Thanks Liz. I like that one too (deamii) but am purposely limiting my choices to easily-sourced plants this go-round. I have other projects where I can satisfy my lust for the more unusual.

I've had a rather amazing range of responses to more or less this same query when talking directly to some of my state's leading experts, all the way from 'I would absolutely not " be planting AWVs to 'go ahead and plant them, VLB is easy to control'.........the latter from our state entomologist whom I referenced above. I'm not usually about setting us up for a later hardship, but this planting is small, discreet, and honestly, I think we've got at least a few years before that menace makes itself known here. And e ven then, I should be able to manage. In case you can't tell, I really like AWV!

+oM

Arrowwood Viburnum Anyone?

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WoodsTea 6a MO

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Arrowwood Viburnum Anyone?

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WoodsTea 6a MO

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