Flowering Dogwood
Cornus florida · Cornaceae · Deciduous
Dogwood is one of the small group of opposite-leaved trees, and it has a leaf test that works even on a torn fragment: tear a leaf gently across and fine white elastic threads stretch between the halves.
Quick facts
- Arrangement
- opposite
- Leaf
- Oval leaves with smooth edges and strongly curved veins that run parallel to the leaf margin toward the tip.
- Bark
- Broken into small square blocks like alligator hide — distinctive and easy to recognise in winter.
- Fruit
- Clusters of glossy red berries in autumn.
- Height
- 15–30 ft
How to confirm it
- Tear a leaf slowly: fine white latex threads stretch across the break. Nothing else in the eastern woods does this.
- Veins curve strongly to follow the leaf edge toward the tip.
- Bark in small square alligator-hide blocks.
- Opposite leaves, and large white or pink spring bracts.
What it is confused with
One observation settles each of these.
Kousa flowers after the leaves emerge and bears a raspberry-like compound fruit rather than a cluster of separate berries.
Where it grows
Eastern North America, as a woodland understorey tree and one of the most planted ornamentals.
Start here: opposite or alternate?
Look at where the leaves join the twig. Are they in matched pairs directly across from each other, or staggered one after another? The vast majority of trees are alternate, so finding an opposite tree removes almost everything else in one step.
In North America, opposite-leaved trees are remembered as MAD Cap Horse: Maple, Ash, Dogwood, Caprifoliaceae (viburnums and elders), and Horse chestnut. That is very nearly the whole list.
Check partway along a healthy twig rather than at the tip, where crowding can make alternate leaves look paired. And check more than one twig.