Hydrangea arborescensL.

wild hydrangea

WFO wfo-0001135369 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Hydrangea arborescens, photographed by Micki Colbeck
fig. a Micki Colbeck, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-09 / obs. 204733928
Hydrangea arborescens, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. b Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202711511
Hydrangea arborescens, photographed by Dominic
fig. c Dominic, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205530462
Hydrangea arborescens, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. d Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203974176
Hydrangea arborescens, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. e Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201722901
Hydrangea arborescens, photographed by mefisher
fig. f mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205017114
Hydrangea arborescens, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. g Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204241678
Hydrangea arborescens, photographed by Bonnie Semmling
fig. h Bonnie Semmling, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202346070

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 963 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 963 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 31 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Hydrangea acuta Raf.
  • Hydrangea amplifolia Raf.
  • Hydrangea arborescens f. acarpa H.St.John
  • Hydrangea arborescens f. arborescens
  • Hydrangea arborescens f. carnea (Raf.) Uttal
  • Hydrangea arborescens f. grandiflora Rehder
  • Hydrangea arborescens f. sterilis (Torr. & A.Gray) Rehder
  • Hydrangea arborescens f. vulgaris C.K.Schneid.
  • Hydrangea arborescens subsp. arborescens
  • Hydrangea arborescens var. arborescens
  • Hydrangea arborescens var. australis Harb.
  • Hydrangea arborescens var. cordata (Pursh) Torr. & A.Gray
  • Hydrangea arborescens var. grandiflora Lemoine
  • Hydrangea arborescens var. grandiflora Rehder
  • Hydrangea arborescens var. kanawhana Millsp.
  • Hydrangea arborescens var. oblonga Torr. & A.Gray
  • Hydrangea arborescens var. sterilis Torr. & A.Gray
  • Hydrangea arborescens var. vulgaris Ser.
  • Hydrangea cordata Pursh
  • Hydrangea frutescens Moench
  • Hydrangea glauca Raf.
  • Hydrangea heterophylla Raf.
  • Hydrangea laevigata Steud.
  • Hydrangea nivea var. conformis Ser.

and 7 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.