Cornaceae
Cornus florida
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Flowering Dogwood on:
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Seed |
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| Other Names for this Plant |
American Dogwood, Florida Dogwood, Indian Arrowwood, Cornelian Tree, White Cornel, False Box, and False Boxwood
Range: From southern Maine west to southern Ontario and eastern Kansas, and south to northern Florida and eastern Texas and also in Illinois, with a disjunct population in eastern Mexico in Nuevo Leon and Veracruz.
Flowering dogwood is a small deciduous tree growing to 10 m (30 ft) high, often wider than it is tall when mature, with a trunk diameter of up to 30 cm (1 ft). A 10-year-old tree will stand about 5 m (15 ft) tall. The leaves are opposite, simple, oval with acute tips, 6-13 cm long and 4-6 cm broad, with an apparently entire margin (actually very finely toothed, under a lens); they turn a rich red-brown in fall.
The flowers are individually small and inconspicuous, with four greenish-yellow petals 4 mm long. Around 20 flowers are produced in a dense, rounded, umbel-shaped inflorescence, or flower-head, 1-2 cm in diameter. The flower-head is surrounded by four conspicuous large white, pink or red "petals" (actually bracts), each bract 3 cm long and 2.5 cm broad, rounded, and often with a distinct notch at the apex. The flowers are bisexual.
While most of the wild trees have white bracts, some selected cultivars of this tree also have pink bracts, some even almost a true red. They typically flower in early April in the southern part of their range, to late April or early May in northern and high altitude areas.
The fruit is a cluster of two to ten drupes, each 10-15 mm
long and about 8 mm wide, which ripen in the late summer
and the early fall to a bright red, or occasionally yellow
with a rosy blush.
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What's This?
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Main, Real, Two First-Leaves (Dicots) |
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Real, Two First-Leaves (Dicots) |
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Half Capsule Seed Division |
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Magnolia Division |
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Seed Plants |
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Multiple Spore Sub-Kingdom |
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Multicellular Land Plants |
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Cells with a Nucleus |
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: This species has in the past been used in the production of inks, scarlet dyes, and as a quinine substitute. The hard, dense wood has been used for products such as golf club heads, mallets, wooden rake teeth, tool handles, jeweler’s boxes and butcher’s blocks
The fruit is not poisonous, but is almost inedible raw. When the seed is removed and the flesh is mashed, it can be mixed with other fruits and made into jams, jellies etc.
Legend has it that the wood from the Dogwood tree was used for the construction on which Christ Jesus was crucified. God having pity on the tree gave its white flowers to simulate the Cross. The reddish center of each flower symbolized the blood Christ.
It is the state flower of Virginia. It is also the state tree for Missouri.
Flowering Dogwood
Pink Flower
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Flowering Dogwood
White Flower
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Flowering Dogwood
Fruit & Leaves
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Flowering Dogwood
Bark
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Flowering Dogwood
Sapling
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| Comment:
Flowering Dogwood, Cornus florida |
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