I’D SEEN PHOTOS IN of doublefile viburnum (Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Mariesii’), but they never really caught my attention. Then one day—I think it was at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa.—I saw one in full flower in real life. I was astonished.
The shrub holds its tiered branches horizontally from the main trunk and covers them with pointed, dark green, deeply channeled, pleated leaves. In April and May, masses of white lacecap-style flowers appear on each side of a node along the branches—in other words, in double file.
UNPACKING THE NAME
Some nurseries and gardeners call this, which holds its florets in spheres. You might think that f. is a cultivated variety of that species, but no. Western botanists encountered. , whose flowers are sterile, first, where it was growing in a Japanese garden, and they gave it a species name. ( describes the pleated leaves.) Later they found a fertile form growing in the wild. To name this, they added (which refers to the fine hairs on the young stems and undersides of the leaves), as though the fertile plant was a variation of the sterile. Really it should be the other way around.
