Walter’s Viburnum – Who’s Walter?

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The Walter’s Viburnum (Viburnum obovatum) has burst into glorious bloom once again, which got me to thinking… who is “Walter”, anyway? A search of one of my favorite online tools, the Botanary at Dave’s Garden, led to the information that the Walter in question is Thomas Walter, who lived from 1740 – 1789. He was a contemporary of great early colonial botanists like William Bartram, and he’s best known for his work Flora Caroliniana, a comprehensive catalog of the flowering plants of South Carolina. (You’ll find Viburnum obovatum listed in that work on page 116.)

And that’s about all I could find out about Thomas Walter. The Wikipedia entry is only a few sentences long, and other web searches turned up nothing but a very thin museum pamphlet about him available for sale on Amazon. Perhaps he was a very private man, or simply not all that interesting. It’s hard to say.

Viburnum itself is a genus of more than 150 flowering shrubs that are found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The name is Latin for “snowball”, a name that seems very appropriate when these trees bloom in the spring. Obovatum describes the leaf shape: egg-shaped and flat, and attached to the stalk at the narrow end. The flowers are a great nectar plant for winter butterflies, especially small species who love the tiny flower clusters.