Flower:

Rounded flower clusters, ¾ to 2¼ inches across, at tips of one-year old branches. Flowers are creamy white, about ¼ inch across, bell to saucer-shaped with 5 broad, rounded lobes. In the center are 5 long, pale yellow-tipped stamens and a single style.

The calyx cupping the flower has a short tube and 5 short, triangular lobes. The calyx and flower stalks are mostly smooth.

Leaves and stems:

Leaves are simple and opposite, the blades mostly egg-shaped, 1½ to 3 inches long, 1 to 2 inches wide, coarsely toothed, tapered to a point and rounded at the base, on a stalk 1/8 to ½ inch long. At the base of the stalk is a pair of slender, nearly thread-like appendages (stipules).

The upper surface is dark green with sparse hairs, lower surface paler and hairy, sometimes hairy just along the veins. Main stems are multiple from base, notably slender and straight, bark brownish gray to gray, mostly smooth though rougher at the base, the largest stems only 1 to 1¼ inch diameter.

Fruit:

Mature fruit is an egg-shaped, somewhat flattened, ¼ to ½ inch long, berry-like drupe, nearly black when ripe with a single seed inside.

Notes:

Downy Arrow-wood is common in forest understories and along woodland margins. In heavier shade it is somewhat sparse but in the open can form dense, shrubby thickets. It is similar to the Southern Arrow-wood (Viburnum dentatum), which is not native in Minnesota but more common as a landscape shrub and is generally larger with nearly hairless leaves, longer leaf stalks, heavier fruit clusters, and lacks the stipules at the base of the leaf stalk. As the common name suggests, both are noted or their narrow, straight stem that were preferred for making arrows by native Americans. There are two varieties of V. rafinesquianum, both found in Minnesota. While the differences are not always obvious, var. rafinesquianum has shorter leaf stalks and is more consistently hairy on the lower leaf surface, where in var. affine, the underside hairs are more restricted to the veins and the leaf stalks are consistently longer.