Photograph of White Flowering Dogwood with spring blossoms. Pink variety in background. Cornus florida

Photograph of Pink Flowering Dogwood spring blossoms. Cornus florida

White Flowering Dogwood Tree Cornus florida Photograph shows autumn foliage

Photograph of Pink Flowering Dogwood spring blossoms. Cornus florida White Flowering Dogwood Shrub or Tatarian Dogwood Cornus alba

Cornus is a genus of small trees, shrubs, and even a few herbs.

One of the most beautiful flowering trees native to eastern North America is Cornus florida. It grows from Massachusetts in zone 4 to Florida in Zone 9. It has a couple of varieties that are very showy during mid spring, the White Flowering Dogwood and the Pink Flowering Dogwood. Both of which have bright red berries that appear after the flowers have fallen. There are crossover varieties with both pink and white flowers growing on the same tree caused by grafting a limb of one color on to the tree of the other color. In the woods around the Ohio River Valley the White Flowering variety is the most common, although both varieties are seen with regularity on lawns and in gardens. The flowering of the Dogwoods creates some of the most intense colors in the spring landscape in the Midwest and upper south, where there are festivals honoring the tree.

Cornus florida can grow to 25 ft or more on lawns and in the wild. It usually will spread as wide as its height. It does not like hot sunny locations, yet it is vulnerable to a serious disease caused by an airborne fungus that attacks the leaves, flowers and branches in the spring especially of those trees growing in moist shady locations. The best solution is to plant the trees in sunny dry locations and water the trees frequently during hot dry months in the early morning.

The specimen above (on the left) is Cornus florida (White Flowering Dogwood) showing its fall colors. It was photographed in The Highlands, Louisville, Kentucky on November 1, 1998. It is one of the most popular lawn trees in this region. I intend to photograph both the white and pink varieties this spring when they are in full bloom. They are such beautiful trees that I suspect the Kentucky Derby has been run since the 19th century here in Louisville, the first Saturday of May just to take advantage of the peak in the beautiful spring flowering of the Dogwood trees. Several dogwood festivals are held at that same time of year around this region to honor this beautiful tree.

Another white flowering species (shown above on the right) is Cornus alba or Tatarian Dogwood. This is a very different species from that described above. The Tatarian Dogwood is a small upright shrub from western Asia attaining a height of only 10 ft. It has beautiful blood red branches and creamy white flowers followed by white or bluish tinted berries. Hardy in Zones 4-8.

© 1998 Michael King