American holly tree at Trenton, N. J.
The common dogwood—Cornus florida of the botany—appears in bloom insidiously, one might say; for the so-called flowers open slowly, and they are green in color, and easily mistaken for leaves, after they have attained considerable size. Gradually the green pales to purest white, and the four broad bracts, with the peculiar little pucker at the end of each, swell out from the real flowers, which look like stamens, to a diameter of often four inches. With these flowers clustered thickly on the usually flat, straight branches, the effect against the green or brown of near-by trees is startling. The dogwood's horizontal branching habit makes every scrap of its lovely white blooms effective to the beholder on the ground below, but far more striking if one may see it from above, as looking down a hillside.
Though the dogwood blooms before its leaves are put forth, the foliage sometimes catches up with the flowers; and this foliage is itself a pleasure, because of its fineness and its regular venation, or marking with ribs. In the fall, when the flowers of purest white have been succeeded by oblong berries of brightest scarlet, the foliage remains awhile to contrast with the brilliance of the fruit. The frosts soon drop the leaves, and then the berries stand out in all their attractiveness, offering food to every passing bird, and thus carrying out another of nature's cunning provisions for the reproduction of the species. Seeds in the crops of birds travel free and far, and some fall on good ground!
Floral bracts or involucres of the dogwood
Is it not sad to know that the brave, bold dogwood, holding out its spring flag of truce from arduous weather, and its autumn store of sustenance for our feathered friends, is in danger of extinction from the forest because its hardy, smooth, even-grained white wood has been found to be especially available in the "arts"? I feel like begging for the life of every dogwood, as too beautiful to be destroyed for any mere utility.
I have been wondering as to the reason for the naming of the cornuses as dogwoods, and find in Bailey's great Cyclopedia of Horticulture the definite statement that the name was attached to an English red-branched species because a decoction of the bark was used to wash mangy dogs! This is but another illustration of the inadequacy and inappropriateness of "common" names.
The red-bud in bloom