Viburnum obovatum (small-leaf arrowwood)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Viburnum obovatum, photographed by Lauren Gillett — fig. a Lauren Gillett, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-09 / obs. 182208256

Viburnum obovatum, photographed by Darren Oh — fig. b Darren Oh, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 180024682

Viburnum obovatum, photographed by Stan Shebs — fig. c Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 175459522

Viburnum obovatum, photographed by natalie — fig. d natalie, CC0 1.0 / obs. 114357832

Viburnum obovatum, photographed by Mike Ostrowski — fig. f Mike Ostrowski, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 112269779

Viburnum obovatum, photographed by Jay Horn — fig. g Jay Horn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112275103

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.

Native range 4 botanical countries

Native distribution of Viburnum obovatum, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Alabama	ALA	NORTHERN AMERICA
Florida	FLA
Georgia	GEO
South Carolina	SCA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 199 in flower of 301 examined

67%

86%

88%

25%

14%

38%

25%

Proportion of examined Viburnum obovatum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	8	12	67%	39% to 86%
Feb	96	112	86%	78% to 91%
Mar	85	97	88%	80% to 93%
Apr	1	13	8%	1% to 33%
May	2	8	25%	7% to 59%
Jun	0	7	0%	0% to 35%
Jul	1	7	14%	3% to 51%
Aug	3	8	38%	14% to 69%
Sep	1	12	8%	1% to 35%
Oct	0	9	0%	0% to 30%
Nov	0	8	0%	0% to 32%
Dec	2	8	25%	7% to 59%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Viburnum obovatum observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 199 of 301 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 5 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.

Viburnum laevigatum Aiton
Viburnum lanceolatum Hill
Viburnum nashii Small
Viburnum obovatum var. punicifolium (Desf.) Pursh
Viburnum punicifolium Desf.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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