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West Virginia Trees

Chapter 118: FLOWERING DOGWOOD
By A. B. Brooks
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Nature/Gardening/Animals

About This Book

A practical field guide to the native and introduced trees of West Virginia, providing keys based mainly on leaves and fruits, concise family and species descriptions, and detailed line drawings for about 101 native species. It organizes trees by botanical families, gives brief flower notes, a glossary of terms, and suggestions for identifying specimens; occasional introduced species and shrubs are noted. The bulletin emphasizes simplicity for non-specialists, offers measurements and habit descriptions for each species, and includes administrative prefatory material. Its aim is to aid lay readers and students in tree identification and to encourage local interest in forestry.

FLOWERING DOGWOOD

Cornus florida, L.

Form.—Height 15-35 feet, diameter 4-12 inches; trunk short, not often straight; crown broad and round-topped.

Leaves.—Opposite, simple, ovate, 3-5 inches long, tapered to an acute apex, wedge-shaped at the base, wavy or entire on margin, bright green above, paler beneath, smooth; mid-rib and primary veins prominent.

Flowers.—May; perfect; greenish, small, arranged in a dense cluster and surrounded by a showy, white (or rarely pinkish), 4-bracted corolla-like involucre. The white involucre and the cluster of small flowers which it surrounds are frequently mistaken for a single flower.

Fruit.—Ripens in September or October; a scarlet ovoid drupe, with a grooved stone, borne solitary or in clusters of 2-5 on a stalk. Undeveloped pistillate flowers often persist at base of fruit.

Bark.—On old trunks broken into quadrangular scales, reddish-brown to blackish.

Wood.—Hard, heavy, strong, tough, pale red-brown or pinkish, with lighter sapwood.

Range.—Ontario, Michigan and Massachusetts to Florida, west to Texas and Missouri.

Distribution in West Virginia.—Common in all parts of the State.

Habitat.—Prefers moist, well-drained soils of slopes and bottoms.

Notes.—This well-known tree is prized for its wood which is used for many purposes about the farm and is also manufactured into shuttles, wedges, golf-stick heads, engravers’ blocks, brush blocks, tool handles and for turnery. As an ornamental tree it beautifies the native woods or the lawn by its clusters of white-bracted flowers, and later in the season by its scarlet fruits.