Viburnum Opulus: never any berries

[ifIwerenotanandroid]

I know I could google this but MN gardeners have personal experience, so...

I have a Viburnum Opulus which is very tall & covered right now with balls of white flowers ranging from golf ball to tennis ball size. It looks gorgeous. But it never has any berries, which is what I actually planted it for. Why aren't there any berries?

It's not very successfully self-fertile. You need a pollination partner.

Which did you buy? Viburnum opulis is the UK native guelder rose and fruits easily (or does round here - maybe because pollination partners abound), “Snowball tree” is Vibunum opulis sterilis and is sterile

Almost all of the more highly-bred viburnum opulus are poorly self-fertile or sterile. It's just like pears - the more highly bred, the less likely they'll cope without a pollination partner. I don't know why, though.

I don't know what I bought - it was a long time ago, hence the size now.

Is there any way of telling if it's sterile/knowing what sex the shrub is? Off to speak to Mr Google...

Wild Viburnum opulus has inflorescences with a lot of small fertile flowers (which will produce berries) surrounded by a circle of a few large-petalled, sterile flowers to attract insects.

The snowball variety basically has all the fertile flowers replaced by the sterile type, so it looks pretty (to some people) but is useless for pollinating insects and doesn't fruit.

i have the ted berried but also viburnum xanthecarpum (or similar name) with yellow berries. Flowers are less interesting than the snowball one.

No accounting for tastes! The snowball one is more showy, but all the flowers are the same, I find the flowers of the wild one more interesting because the flowers aren’t all the same.

The yellow berried is still V opulus, it’s V opulus v xanthocarpum. I wonder if it’s just lacking itsred pugment? - a nursery description of the dwarf variety says “lacking any purple tinge to its leaves”

xantho = yellow, carpum = fruit.