Ever since I moved to my current city almost 4 years ago, I've made a list of sorts of all the plants I see that intrigue me. I learn a lot about a new territory just by studying the plant life.
The feature today is: the Japanese Snowball, aka. Viburnum plicatum.
The first time I saw this plant, I did not make the connection between it and the typical snowball plant we’ve all seen in grandma’s front yard. This guy’s inflorescence (science-y speak for flowers) looked too weird and unlike anything remotely familiar with their little halo thing going on. But as it turns out, it’s really the same plant! Isn’t that wild? The round “snowballs” are merely cultivated to have only sterile flowers, meanwhile these guys are busy signalling to the pollinators to help in their quest for world conquest (Viburnum is noted for being extremely fast-growing, and will easily turn into a wild thicket if you let it).
My favorite part? That the blooms structure themselves around a nifty 6-pointed star formation. You don’t normally think of flowers as being geometric, but a surprising number are. 🌿
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