I seem to be doing shrubs and trees with tiny white flowers at the moment. This shrub is in Vancouver's West End, photographed February 25. The almost luminescent blue berries are still on with the new tiny 5-petaled white flowers in umbels on the branch ends. I can't tell if the leaf backs have tiny hairs or just the leaf edges - I didn't notice the hairs until I saw them in the photos. I didn't notice a fragrance, which doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't one. Is it Viburnum rigidum or tinus, and if one of those, what would distinguish it from the other one?
V. tinus has lustrus dark green leaves.. the other has dull green leaves. If the leaves have hairs in the leaf edges it is V. rigidum, which also has hairs on the underside mid rib and veins. V.tinus has tufts of hairs in the underside of the leaf, lower vein axils.
Looks like V. tinus to me. V. rigidum is unlikely anyway in Vancouver; being from the Canary Islands it is distinctly less hardy than V. tinus. In Britain, V. rigidum can only be grown in milder zone 9 areas, whereas V. tinus is hardy almost throughout the country; Vancouver is zone 8, not 9, so I'd suspect V. rigidum won't be reliably hardy.
Here is a good pic of Viburnum rigidum clearly showing the hairs. Even the petioles have hairs! See..... [Edited by wcutler: I had to remove the link, as it no longer worked. Here is a page with a photo, which google offered to translate to English: http://www.arbolappcanarias.es/especies/ficha/viburnum-rigidum/ ]
This is a bit of a moot point now, as V. rigidum is now called Viburnum tinus ssp. rigidum. Silver surfer's link no longer works, and I can't find any photos showing even as many hairs as are on the one I posted, except on this very helpful Viburnum leaf and flower and leaf buds comparison page of "Viburnums taught in Hort 231, Dept. of Horticulture & Landscape Architecture, Washington State University".
