Alternate-leaved Dogwood

Cornaceae - Dogwood Family
"A Year With the Trees" - Tree Number 20
Alternate-leaved Dogwood
Cornus alternifolia


Winter

Alternate-leaf Dogwood

The Alternate-leaved (or leaf) Dogwood in this photo lives at the Botanical Gardens at Asheville.  This is a beautiful garden with many native southern Appalachian trees.  http://www.ashevillebotanicalgardens.org/

The Alternate-Leaved Dogwood - Cornus alternifolia

Spring

Alternate-leaved Dogwood

These images show the springtime ivory-colored flowers of the alternate-leaved dogwood tree. 
The leaves look like a flowering dogwood except they are alternate instead of paired opposite.

"Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf." Albert Schweitzer

Alternate-leaved Dogwood

The flowers bloom in April and May.  These flowers are grouped together in a flattened top type of arrangement called a cyme.

Summer

The Alternate-leaved Dogwood

This tree is called an under storytree, for it grows under the forest canopy.  It often will have horizontal branching and a flat-topped crown.

Fall

Alternate-leaf Dogwood

The Alternate-leaved dogwood is a small tree which may reach up to 30 ft and 6 inches in diameter. The tree has slender branches that grow horizontal to the ground. The Bark is green as a young tree and retains some green as it grows older. The leaves are alternate and clustered mainly at the end of the limbs that appear almost whorled. The fruits are blue black drupes with an unpleasant odor. The dead twigs turn bright yellow. This tree has white flowers in April and May.

I found it interesting when I read that it is possible that the common name of Dogwood may have come because “dogs were washed with a brew of its bark, hence Dogwood.”

For the love of the Trees,
Becky