native american dogwood

Native dogwoods are my favorite flowering tree to sell for so many reasons. This popular native tree can grow in full sun to full shade, with full sun trees getting ~25' tall and full shade specimens topping out at 30-35' tall due to stretching for sunlight. April flowers last a few weeks, with petals dropping as light green foliage appears. Fall brings wonderful colors starting with deep greenish-maroon and ending with brilliant fiery-red. Morning and afternoon backlighting by sunlight makes this natural tree glow with warmth. Makes a great climbing tree for kids when older as the flaky bark makes for good gripping. 

Cherokee brave is the best pink variety. Light levels and age of the flowers determine the shade of pink on any particular day, and the splash of white makes 'cherokee brave' superior to the others, in my opinion. 

Cherokee princess white dogwood just about to flower. 

Cloud 9 white dogwood is a variety I like a lot. The petals are as wide as long, making the whole flower look like a hippy daisy painted on a VW bus in 1965. Other varieties of dogwoods have narrower petals and do not produce the same effect. Cloud 9 is a pure paper white, with other white dogwoods having a hint of yellow mixed with the white. 

Cloud 9 profuse production of pure white blossoms is stunning. Look closely at the wide petals.

One of the more interesting attributes about the american dogwood tree is the fact that it feeds the native insects and birds. In the fall/early winter after the leaves have dropped, the bright red berries attract all sorts of birds to your property, and its fun to watch them duck and weave onto your tree, grab a berry, and sprint away to gulp it down. 

Lastly- the colorful part of the dogwood "flower" isn't really a flower at all! The four petals are actually the sheath that protected the reproductive structure all winter long. They expand and stretch then turn colorful so the pollinators know there is a treat to be found within. The real flower is the little structure I tried to focus on when taking this picture today. It's these teeny flowers that turn into the berries that were the key to these tree's survival before man came along. Birds eat the berries for the fruit around the seed, then poop out the seed somewhere else. The acid in the bird's gut triggers the seed's germination process. Voila! Bet you didn't know that! That's why we see dogwood trees popping up around in the strangest places sometimes. The acid eating the seed coat is called "scarification," and without it the seed won't germinate. I guess that keeps the seed from germinating under the parent plant.