Viburnum opulusL.

guelder-rose

WFO wfo-0000422807 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Viburnum opulus, photographed by Daniel Seth Jackson
fig. a Daniel Seth Jackson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205797788
Viburnum opulus, photographed by Vadim Zizov
fig. b Vadim Zizov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205403560
Viburnum opulus, photographed by Светлана Царахова
fig. c Светлана Царахова, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205754974
Viburnum opulus, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. d Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205835666
Viburnum opulus, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. e Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205700464
Viburnum opulus, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. f Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205691804
Viburnum opulus, photographed by Carol Ann Vermeer
fig. g Carol Ann Vermeer, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205438958
Viburnum opulus, photographed by Marina Potapova
fig. h Marina Potapova, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205375225

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 = 2,210 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 2,210 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 41 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.

  • Opulus edulis J.Presl
  • Opulus glandulosa Moench
  • Opulus oxycoccos (Pursh) J.Presl
  • Opulus palustris Gray
  • Opulus vulgaris Borkh.
  • Viburnum americanum Mill.
  • Viburnum glandulosum Salisb.
  • Viburnum lobatum Lam.
  • Viburnum nanum Dippel
  • Viburnum opuloides Muhl.
  • Viburnum opulus f. glabrifolium Gajić
  • Viburnum opulus f. intermedium (Nakai) Sugim.
  • Viburnum opulus f. puberulum Sugimoto
  • Viburnum opulus subsp. americanum (Mill.) Piper & Beattie
  • Viburnum opulus subsp. opulus
  • Viburnum opulus subsp. trilobum (Marshall) R.T.Clausen
  • Viburnum opulus var. calvescens (Rehder) H.Hara
  • Viburnum opulus var. flavum Horw.
  • Viburnum opulus var. opulus
  • Viburnum opulus var. pimina Michx.
  • Viburnum opulus var. pubinerve Makino
  • Viburnum opulus var. sargentii (Koehne) Takeda
  • Viburnum opulus var. subintegrifolium (Hook.) Torr. & A.Gray
  • Viburnum opulus var. trilobum (Marshall) McAtee

and 17 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.