[2][3] Its common names—silverleaf hydrangea or snowy hydrangea—reflect its distinctive foliage which is dark green on top and silvery white below;[4] the sharply contrasting foliar colors makes this shrub conspicuous at a distance, especially in a breeze.

[5] Silver hydrangea is native to the mountainous region (usually above 2,000 feet elevation) represented by the southern Blue Ridge Mountains from southeast Tennessee, east to North Carolina and northwestern South Carolina, and south to northeastern Georgia.

Some outlier occurrences of silverleaf hydrangea have been locally observed in the Piedmont Region; these populations may have escaped from cultivation.

[7][3] Evidence for separating these three closely related, native hydrangeas is based largely on cross-pollination experiments conducted by Ronald Pilatowski.

[3] The leaves of silverleaf hydrangea are large (8 to 15 cm long), opposite, serrated, ovate, and deciduous.