FLOWERING DOGWOOD
(Cornus Florida)

The dogwood or cornel family is old but not numerous. It originated several hundred thousand years ago and spread over much of the world, but preferred the temperate latitudes. One species at least crossed the equator and established itself in the highlands of Peru. There are forty or fifty species in all, about one-third of them in the United States, but most are shrubs. Black gum and tupelo are members of the family, and are giants compared with the dogwoods. In Europe the tree is usually called cornel, and that has been made the family name. It is a very old word, coined by the Romans before the days of Caesar. They so named it because it was hard like horn (cornus meaning horn in the Latin language). They used it as shafts of spears, and so common was that use that when a speaker referred to a spear he simply called it by the name of the wood of the handle or shaft, as when Virgil described a combat which was supposed to have occurred 800 years before the Christian era, and used the words: “Clogged in the wound the Italian cornel stood.”

The qualities of this wood which led to important uses among the Romans, have always made dogwood a valuable material. Civilized nations do not need it for spear shafts, but they have other demands which call for large amounts.

The flowering dogwood has other names in this country. It is generally known simply as dogwood, but it is called boxwood in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Mississippi, Michigan, Kentucky, and Indiana; false box-dogwood in Kentucky; New England boxwood in Tennessee; flowering cornel in Rhode Island; and cornel in Texas.

Its range extends from Massachusetts through Ontario and Michigan to Missouri, south to Florida, and west to Texas. The area where it grows includes about 800,000 square miles. It is most common and of largest size in the South, comparatively rare in the North, generally occurs in the shade of taller trees, and prefers well-drained soil, but is not particular whether it is fertile or thin.

The dogwood is valuable as ornament and for its wood. It was formerly a source of medicine, from roots, bark, and flowers; but it seems to have been largely displaced by other drugs; was once considered a good substitute for quinine, that use having been learned from Indian doctors. The Indians dug roots for a scarlet dye with which the vain warrior stained escutcheons on buckskin, and colored porcupine quills and bald eagle feathers for decorating his moccasins and his hair.

The dogwood varies in size from a shrub with many branches to a tree forty feet high, eighteen inches in diameter, and with a flat but shapely crown. The trunk rises as a shaft with little taper, until the first branches are reached. All the branches start at the same place, and the trunk ends abruptly—divides into branches. Flowers are an important part of the tree, as might be inferred from the prominence given them in the tree’s names. In the South the flowers appear in March, in the North in May, and in both regions before the opening of the leaves. The flowers on vigorous trees are three or four inches across, white, and very showy. A dogwood tree in full bloom against a hillside in spring is a most conspicuous object, and is justly admired by all who have appreciation of beauty. The flowers fall as leaves appear, and for some months the tree occupies its little space in the forest unobserved; but in the autumn it bursts again into glory, and while not quite as conspicuous an object as when in bloom, it is no less worthy of admiration. The fall of the leaves reveals the brilliant scarlet fruit which ladens the branches. The berries are just large enough for a good mouthful for a bird, but birds spare them until fully ripe to the harvest, and they then harvest them very rapidly. The tree is thus permitted to display its fruit a considerable time before yielding it to the feathered inhabitants of the air whose mission in forest economy is to scatter the seeds of trees, when nature provides the seeds themselves with no wings for flying.

The two periods in the year when dogwood is highly ornamental, the flowers in spring before leaves appear, and fruit in autumn after leaves fall, are responsible for this tree’s importance in ornamental planting. It is a common park tree, but it is small, generally not more than fifteen feet high, and it occupies subordinate places in the plans of the landscape garden. It is a filler between oaks, pines, and spruces, and it passes unnoticed, except when in bloom and in fruit.

Dogwood is about four pounds per cubic foot heavier than white oak, has the same breaking strength, and is lower in elasticity. It is quite commonly believed that this tree has no heartwood, but the belief is erroneous. It seldom has much, and small trunks often none; but when dogwood reaches maturity it develops heart. Sometimes the heartwood is no larger than a lead pencil in trunks forty or fifty years old. The heart is brown, sapwood is white, and is the part wanted by the users of dogwood. Annual rings are obscure and it is a tree of slow growth. The wood is as nearly without figure as any in this country. It seldom or never goes to sawmills. The logs are too small. Most of the supply is bought by manufacturers of shuttles and golf stick heads, in this country and Europe. They purchase it by the cord or piece. It does not figure much in any part of the lumber business, but is cut and marketed in ways peculiar to itself. Log cutters in hardwood forests pay little attention to it. The dogwood harvest comes principally from southern states. Village merchants are the chief collectors, and they sell to contractors who ship to buyers in the manufacturing centers. The village merchants buy from farmers, who cut a stick here and there as they find it in woodlots, forests, or by the wayside, on their own land or somebody else’s. When the cutter next drives to town he throws his few dogwoods in the wagon, and trades them to the store keeper for groceries or other merchandise. It is small business, but in the aggregate it brings together enough dogwood to supply the trade.

Dogwood has many uses, but none other approaches shuttle making and golfhead manufacture in importance. The wood is made into brush blocks, wedges, engraver’s blocks, tool handles, machinery bearings as a substitute for lignum-vitÆ, small hubs, and many kinds of turnery and other small articles.

Western Dogwood (Cornus nuttallii) is a larger, taller tree than the eastern flowering dogwood. A height of 100 feet is claimed for it in the low country along the coast of British Columbia, but there are no authentic reports of trees so large anywhere south of the boundary between Canada and the United States. Its height ranges from twenty to fifty feet, and its diameter from six to twenty inches. The appearance is much the same as its eastern relative. Its berries are red, and grow in clusters of forty or less; the bark on old trunks is rough, but is smooth on those of medium size; the flowers are generally described as very large and showy, but the true flower is quite an inconspicuous affair, being a small, greenish-yellow, button-like cluster, surrounded by four or six snowy-white or sometimes pinkish scales which are popularly but erroneously supposed to form a portion of the real flower. The western dogwood in its native forest often puts out flowers in autumn; is well supplied with foliage which assumes red and orange colors in the fall when the showy berries are at their best. However, the tree has not yet won its way into the good graces of landscape gardeners, and has not been much planted in parks. It wants some of the good points possessed by the flowering dogwood. The western tree shows to best advantage in its native forest where it thrives on gentle mountain slopes and in low bottoms, valleys, and gulches, provided the soil is well drained and rich. It runs southward fifteen hundred miles from Vancouver island to southern California. It cares little for sunshine, and often is found growing nicely in dense shade. Seedlings do better where shade is deep. The wood is lighter but somewhat stronger than that of the flowering dogwood; is pale reddish-brown, with thick sapwood; is hard, and checks badly in seasoning. Mature trees are from 100 to 150 years.

Blue Dogwood (Cornus alternifolia) is given that name because of the blue fruit it bears. It has a number of other names, among them being purple dogwood, green osier, umbrella tree, pigeonberry, and alternate-leaved dogwood, the last being simply a translation of its botanical name. It grows in more northern latitudes than the flowering dogwood, and does not range as far south. It is found from Nova Scotia to Alabama, and westward to Minnesota, but its southern habitat lies along the Appalachian mountain ranges. It attains size and assumes form similar to the flowering dogwood. The wood is heavy, hard, brown, tinged with red, the sapwood white. It is a deep forest tree, but has been domesticated in a few instances where it has been planted as ornament. The wood seems to possess the good qualities of flowering dogwood, but no reports of uses for it have been made.

Two varieties of flowering dogwood have been produced by cultivation, weeping dogwood (Cornus florida pendula), and red-bract dogwood (Cornus florida rubra). English cornel or dogwood (Cornus mas) has been planted in many parts of this country. The so-called Jamaica dogwood is not in the dogwood family.