I was going to title this White-flowered hydrangeas, but decided to leave it less specific so that others could be posted here. My recent interest has been the hydrangeas that Douglas Justice has featured in Featured Plants in August 2020 in the Neighbourhood - UBC Botanical Garden blog. He first featured Hydrangea arborescens, a week in which everything I found was H. paniculata; then the next week he featured Hydrangea paniculata, and I started finding H. arborescens. So I will start with Hydrangea arborescens, featured August 3-9, which was totally new to me. They are still looking very good. The flowers are white, though they can go pinkish. The sterile flowers are around 1/4 the size of those on the common hydrangea, H. macrophylla. The floppy leaves are characteristic too. These are near me in the West End. This is in Queen Elizabeth Park, on the path down to the large quarry garden. This is in Stanley Park, at the lower Rose Garden. The gardener said it's the cultivar 'Limelight'. Hydrangea paniculata, featured August 17-23. I have posted some photos in the Out and About thread: Appreciation: - Out and About As I mentioned there (quoting Douglas Justice from an email), these have elongated, paniculate inflorescences and smallish leaves (and whorls of three leaves at some of the nodes, which is very common in H. paniculata). This is the one that is probably the 'Smhplqf' (marketed under Little Quick Fire® and often listed merely as Quick Fire) that I posted there, but a few days later. These are in the Stanley Park Rose Garden. The gardener said this one is 'Fraise Melba'. I am told that the fraise will be coming as the flowers age. Compared to others I had seen of this species, I found it unusual the way the fertile flowers were so interspersed with the sterile ones. This was next to the previous one, and I was told that the name is Lava Lamp. This seems to be 'Kolmakilima', trademarked as Lava Lamp Moonrock. This is presumably an instance where the base colour was white, but it has already gone pinkish. For comparison, here is a Hydrangea macrophylla, with stiffer larger leaves and much larger sterile flowers. Or are they really sterile? They each seem to have the large petals, but with a fertile-looking flower in the centre. I also find it curious that those large petals or bracts have in some cases entire margins and in other cases scalloped edges.
Here is what I think has to be a Hydrangea arborescens, and I'm thinking it would be one of the Proven Winners Invincibelle® cultivars, either 'NCHA7' (Mini Mauvette®) or 'NCHA2' (Invincibelle® Spirit II) - I'm not sure why the name is written that way for just this one cultivar. This appeared to have no fertile flowers when I looked at it, but it seems it really does have them, just hidden inside the sterile flowers. These are in a private planting at a West End house that is known for its over-the-top landscaping.
