Photo: Douglas Goldman, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Wild Hydrangea

Hydrangea arborescens

Also called smooth hydrangea, sevenbark.

A woodland shrub that blooms on new stems even when cut to the ground each winter, with broad heads of creamy white flowers in early summer.

Showy flowersTolerates shadeWildlife valueWinter interest

Type: Shrub
Mature height: 3–6 ft
USDA zones: 3–9
Growth rate: Fast
Sun: Full, Part, Shade
Soil moisture: Average
Grows wild in: Rich moist slopes, stream banks, rocky ground and the forest understory
Native range: 23 states and the District of Columbia, north to New York, south to Florida and west to Kansas
List all 24
Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia
Also recorded in 2 other states, outside its native range. See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Wild hydrangea is a low, many-stemmed shrub of eastern woods, with flat to domed heads of tiny creamy white flowers in early summer. Its bark peels in thin layers of different colors, and another of its names is sevenbark. It is the close relative of the silverleaf hydrangea we grow, once treated as the same species. Turn a leaf over to tell them apart: it is green and nearly hairless beneath on wild hydrangea and felted silvery white on silverleaf. Wild hydrangea's heads also carry few or no large sterile flowers, where most silverleaf heads wear a ring of them. Florida lists it as endangered and New York as threatened, at the edges of its range. Mass it on a shaded slope or along a woodland edge, where it can spread into a low thicket.

Size, growth and what to expect

Wild hydrangea grows fast, about two and three quarter feet a year in our growth estimator while young. It makes a rounded, many-stemmed shrub 3 to 6 feet tall and about as wide. Its underground stems slowly widen it into a clump or, in the wild, a thicket. Seedlings can flower within their first year.

Flat to domed heads 2 to 8 inches across open from May into July, with scattered blooms into September. Each holds hundreds of tiny creamy white flowers with a light, sweet smell, and sometimes a few large white sterile ones at the edge. Bees and flies visit them, and it is a host plant of the hydrangea sphinx moth. Small, ribbed brown capsules ripen from July into September, and the dried heads stand through winter.

It grows wild from southern New York west to Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma, and south to Louisiana and Florida. Its home is rich, moist woods, ravines, shaded bluffs and stream banks, and it also grows on drier rocky ledges.

How to grow Wild Hydrangea

Wild hydrangea does best in part shade. It takes full sun only where the soil stays moist, and in hot summers its leaves scorch in sun. It also grows in fairly deep shade. Give it a rich, moist soil that drains well. Plant it 3 feet from a wall and set plants 3 feet apart in a mass. Its size lets it go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep a mulch of leaves over the roots, clear of the stems. The seed is as fine as dust and needs no chilling. Sow it indoors in winter on the surface of moist seed mix, uncovered and under lights. Seedlings come up in about ten days.

Water weekly through the first two summers and in hot, dry spells after that, since its leaves droop in drought. It flowers on new wood, so cut the stems back close to the ground in late winter to renew the plant. Remove weak or broken stems in early spring.

Each small inner flower carries both male and female parts, while the large white outer flowers are sterile. Sources disagree on whether wild hydrangea sets seed with its own pollen, so plant two or more seedlings from different parents for seed. Its weak stems bend under heavy rain and break in wind and ice. Leaf spots, powdery mildew, aphids and mites turn up, but none is serious.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (12)