Blackhaw

Name:  Blackhaw

Botanical Name:Viburnum prunifolium

Form: shrub or small tree

Parts Used: berries, browse

Citation: Guenther, K. (2017, January 12) Blackhaw as wildlife food [Web log post.] Retrieved: Reader supplies the date, from http://wildfoods4wildlife.com

Getting Started

Blackhaw is one of my favorite shrubs to forage. It’s a good bet that all thrushes will like the berries. Blackhaw is scattered throughout the woods of my area, yet was invisible to me for years until I learned to pay attention to their spring bloom when they stand out against the green background. Viburnums as a whole rank #21 on our Favorite Fruits List, and #18 on our Best Browse List.  The berries are just beautiful hanging against their rich, fall red foliage. Though this is not the easiest beginner forage plant to find and identify, it is also not hard to find blackhaw by training your eye to look for the spring white blooming shrubs in wild woods and making note of where to come back to for fall fruit. Start looking for the white clusters of blooms from mid-April to mid-May. Take some flagging tape and mark the shrub with some notes to guide you back to the location for fruit in the fall. Since these are an understory shrub, they just seem to blend into the scenery from any distance once they lose their flowers.

Adoxaceae (Viburnum family)

Viburnum (Viburnum genus)

 

Common name	Virginia Viburnum  Species	Origin	Rare Plant Status
maple-leaf viburnum	V. acerifolium	native	not rare
northern wild raisin	V. cassinoides	native	not rare
arrow-wood	V. dentatum	native	not rare
linden arrow-wood	V. dilatatum	non-native	not rare
hobblebush	V. lantanoides	native	yes, in some states (not Virginia)
nannyberry	V. lentago	native	Globally secure, critically imperiled in Virginia
possum-haw	V. nudum	native	yes, in some states (not Virginia)
snowball	V. opulus	native and introduced	not rare
japanese snowball	V. plicatum	non-native	not rare
black haw	V. prunifolium	native	yes, in some states (not Virginia)
downy arrow-wood	V. rafinesqueanum	native	yes, in some states (not Virginia)
rusty black haw	V. rufidulum	native	not rare
tea viburnum	V. setigerum	native	not rare
siebold’s viburnum	V. sieboldii	non-native	not rare

Key Features to Look For

In addition to the identification guide of your choice, here are a couple of features you should see on this shrub:

• Opposite branching
• Black/blue shiny berries in clusters on red stems and clusters hang downward, berries are green on red stems when immature
• Dry berries, not juicy, with a single, large, flat, oval seed
• Arching branches
• Very fine teeth on the leaves
• Multiple trunks

• 

About this Species

This fall food is utilized widely across mammals and birds. Due to the berry’s dry nature, it persists on the bush for up to a month or more. Some bushes can be very heavily laden in some years.

Flower Description: Small, 5-petalled white individual flowers with tall yellow anthers, many flowers make up a showy rounded clusters the size of your fist. Blooms mid April to mid-May.

Leaf Description:  Opposite leaves, elliptical and very finely toothed. Leaf stems tinged with red.

Seed/ Fruit Size: Berry clusters hang downward and have red stems on the berries. The ripe fruit is shiny black when ripe, slightly elliptical with a 3/32 inch (2 mm) petiole (stem) that stays attached to fruit after picking. The berry itself is about 3/8 inch (10 mm) long by ¼ inch (7 mm) wide, but the seed inside is only slightly smaller than the fruit but is very flat—only 3/32 inch (2 mm) thick. So there is not a lot of flesh on this fruit, it is not juicy, even at peak ripeness. Sometimes the berry even starts to dry and shrivel on the bush.

Harvest

		Jan		Feb		Mar		Apr		May		Jun		Jul		Aug		Sep		Oct		Nov		Dec
		winter		winter		late winter		early spring		spring		late spring		early summer		summer		late summer		early fall		fall		late fall
fruit																			x	x	x	x	x
browse										x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x

Storing Prepared Fruit

Commercial berry containers are great for storing fruit because the rigid plastic keeps fruit from getting crushed and they also have small holes in them which control the humidity in the container. This slows the fruit from drying out too quickly, but allows air circulation to reduce molding.

Viburnum berries keep well in re-used commercial clamshell berry containers in the refrigerator for one to two weeks. It is ideal to use this fruit fresh, if at all possible.For a fruit, they freeze somewhat well and are not as mushy as most fruits upon thawing due to their lower moisture content. Nutrients will be preserved if frozen.

Spread berries in a single layer on a cookie sheet and place in freezer for 1 day. Once frozen, repackage them into zipping freezer baggies (3 mils or thicker) or glass jars to keep them from drying out, remove as much air as possible from the baggie, label and store in freezer until needed—no more than 1 year. Avoid freezing, thawing and refreezing as might happen in a door of a freezer.

See more detailed instructions under the tab “Food Harvest, Process and Storage.”

Harvesting Browse

Browse as a term used on this website refers to the twigs and small branches, with or without leaves or needles, of trees, shrubs, vines and other woody stemmed plants.  Browse can also refer to bark, for the animals that gnaw on bark.

Small trees cannot tolerate very much cutting and survive. The best time to harvest browse for the health of the tree is late fall to winter, but that may not be when you need the browse. The best limbs to remove are ones that rub together and cause abrasions that can make the tree vulnerable to insect damage. Or, cut branches that are overcrowded or hang low to the ground. Prune branches back to the base where the branch meets the trunk to minimize future insect damage to the tree.

Dip pruning shears into a bleach water solution (1:3) to minimize transferring tree diseases from one tree to the next.

Place the cut end of the browse in a bucket of water as soon as possible after cutting- ideally taking a bucket of what with you as you harvest because the branch will start to close itself off the instant it is injured. Then keep them in water as much as possible prior to feeding, which ideally means even during transport.Keep bucket of browse in the shade.

Browse cuttings are best fed to animals right away, they do not store well for more than a day before the leaves start to wilt and dry out, especially if it is hot.

Other Viburnum Species

Rare Viburnum Species in Virginia

Do you live in one of these Virginia counties? If so, be aware that there are some species near you that may be threatened or endangered. Do more research to make sure you are identifying your target species correctly and not harvesting a threatened species!

That being said, I think species-level ID is a little bit difficult for viburnums. So I felt validated for the difficulty I was having when I read that nannyberry and rusty blackhaw sometimes hybridize with blackhaw.  Since I wouldn’t want to physically damage an imperiled species, I would not harvest browse from blackhaw in the below listed counties, just in case I was off on my species ID and had nannyberry in hand instead.

County in Virginia	Rare Viburnum Species	Alert
Augusta	nannyberry	globally secure, critically imperiled in Virginia
Giles	nannyberry	globally secure, critically imperiled in Virginia
Highland	nannyberry	globally secure, critically imperiled in Virginia
Page	nannyberry	globally secure, critically imperiled in Virginia

Feed Blackhaw and other Viburnums to:

Book Resources:

Martin, A.C., Zim, H.S., Nelson, A.L. (1951). American Wildlife and Plants: A Guide to Wildlife Food Habits. New York: Dover Publications.

Scott, M. (2013). Songbird Diet Index. National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, St. Cloud, MN.

Townsend, J. F. (2015, April) Rare Plants Natural Heritage Technical Report 15-10. (Unpublished Report) Richmond, Virginia: Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Division of Natural Heritage.

On-line Resources:

Coladonato, Milo. 1993. Viburnum acerifolium. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online].
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer).
Available: http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/ [2016, November 15].

Matthews, Robin F. 1992. Viburnum edule. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online].
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer).
Available: http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/ [2017, February 2].

USDA, NRCS. 2015. The PLANTS Database (http://plants.usda.gov, 24 November 2015). National Plant Data Team, Greensboro, NC 27401-4901 USA.

Virginia Botanical Associates. (Accessed November 2015). Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora (http://www.vaplantatlas.org). c/o Virginia Botanical Associates, Blacksburg.