Homegrown Habitat, July 2025: Buttonbush
Buttonbush’s white or pale-pink spherical flower heads attract hummingbirds, hummingbird moths, butterflies, and many bees. Photo by Sarah Middeleer.
Homegrown Habitat is written each month by Sarah Middeleer, a landscape designer and a member of the Connecticut Audubon Board of Director’s. You can write to her at homegrown@ctaudubon.org.
Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), native to much of the United States and Canada, is a large shrub with a similarly outsized personality. At a distance its whimsical flowers resemble small ping pong balls. Come closer, and they look more like space-age pompoms, due to dozens of small tubular florets with white stamens, topped by yellow anthers, projecting cheerfully from all around small green balls. These sweetly scented flower heads understandably draw the attention of people and pollinators alike.
In New England, buttonbush can be found growing along swamp edges, often with alders. These thickets provide safe hiding places for wood ducks and green herons. Red-winged blackbirds and Virginia rails may nest in buttonbush. Songbirds also use it for nesting and shelter in addition to food.
Also known as button willow, little snowballs, and honeybells, buttonbush is a full, densely branched shrub with glossy, bright-green leaves. It can grow to 12 feet high and eight feet wide but can be kept smaller by pruning in late winter or early spring. It can also be pruned to assume the form of a small tree.
The fall foliage may be yellow, bronze, or red. Buttonbush foliage is an important food for 23 moths, including sphynx and silk moths, as well as wood nymphs. These nutritious moth larvae feed hungry nestlings in spring.
Textured gray bark, a picturesque branching pattern, and the lingering brown or red seed heads provide winter interest.
The white or pale-pink, one-inch spherical flower heads appear in early summer (mine began blooming around July 4) and attract hummingbirds, hummingbird moths, butterflies, and many bee species. The flowers mature into tan or reddish seed heads that often persist through winter, providing food to waterfowl, songbirds, and small mammals.
Rain gardens and wet areas are perfect locations for buttonbush, but it is also suitable for screening, mixed hedgerows, pollinator gardens, and as a specimen. Photo by Sarah Middeleer.
Although buttonbush typically grows in moist conditions, it will take drier ones in a garden setting. Water in very dry periods, especially in its first couple of seasons. It can tolerate a wide range of soils, including clay, loam, and sand. It also tolerates periodic inundation and salt. Buttonbush grows best in full sun but will take some shade.
Rain gardens and wet areas are perfect locations for buttonbush, but it is also suitable for screening, mixed hedgerows, pollinator gardens, and even as a specimen. I planted one with a few of the smaller-growing New Jersey tea, and their bed is abuzz with happy bees this month. Buttonbush is also a good choice for a sunny transition zone between large trees and lawn, and it serves well to control erosion.
Companion plants often found growing with buttonbush in the wild include American beech, red and sugar maples, black and pin oaks, sourgum/tupelo, bayberry, hollies, viburnums, Indian grass, big bluestem, switchgrass, and sedges.
Native Americans used buttonbush to treat sore eyes, diarrhea, inflammation, rheumatism, headache, toothache, fever, and venereal disease. Yet buttonbush contains a toxin called cephalanthin, which is harmful to livestock, pets, and children when ingested. Despite this hazard, deer will occasionally browse buttonbush if they are hungry enough. — by Sarah Middeleer
Resources
Books
Anna Fialkoff, Native Shrubs for Northeast Landscapes, Wild Seed Project, 2023
Websites
Plant Finder – Cephalanthus occidentalis
Buttonbush – Cephalanthus occidentalis | Prairie Nursery
Cephalanthus occidentalis (common buttonbush): Go Botany
https://www.gardendesign.com/shrubs/buttonbush.html
Cephalanthus occidentalis (Button Bush)
https://bonap.net/Napa/TaxonMaps/Genus/State/Cephalanthus
https://nativeplantfinder.nwf.org/Plants/655
