Wayfaring tree
Viburnum lantana
Family · Viburnaceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
The wood-edge shrub with large wrinkled leaves felted beneath, and clusters of berries turning from green to red then black, all at once in the same cluster.
Oak woods · Uplands · Scrubland
Also known asmealy guelder rose, twistwood
How to tell it
Opposite, broad, oval leaves with deeply impressed veins giving a wrinkled look, the underside covered in rough white felt. White flowers in dense flat corymbs. The fruits are the mark: the same cluster carries green, red and black berries at once.
What it is confused with
Laurustinus
Viburnum tinus
Laurustinus has evergreen, smooth, hairless leaves and flowers in winter with metallic blue berries; wayfaring tree is deciduous, its leaves wrinkled and felted, and its berries go red before black. Neither is eaten.
Open sheet →What it is for
None. The berries are toxic and cause vomiting and diarrhoea, the red unripe ones being the worst. The young shoots are extraordinarily flexible and were used as plant rope for tying bundles, which explains the English name twistwood.