Easing into Spring

I am partial to North Carolina’s state flower, flowering dogwood (Cornus florida).

Unlike the in-your-face explosion of invasive, stinky, blinding-white Bradford pear blooms that hits a few weeks earlier, the faintly sweet-scented dogwood flowers stealthily appear in the forested foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in late March. Their cream-colored blossoms seem to float among the yet-bare branches of surrounding oaks, maples, and tulip poplars. By early April, the dogwoods’ ethereal presence permeates the woods and gently lifts the countryside into spring. I penned a little haiku to celebrate it:

❀ ❀ ❀

Dogwood

Gentle, white flowers

seem to float in the forest:

announcing springtime

❀ ❀ ❀

Flowering dogwood is a small tree, 15 to 25 feet tall. Native from southeastern Canada through eastern North America to eastern Mexico, it usually grows under larger forest trees and at woodland edges. This tree is quite tolerant to heat, once established, and has a low flammability rating. The showy dogwood “flower” is actually a cluster of small, true flowers surrounded by four petal-like bracts. The flowers are visited by butterflies and specialized bees, and the red fruits are a food source for songbirds and other wildlife from fall through winter.

While researching this Nature Nugget, I learned that I am fortunate to enjoy a healthy local population of this exquisite understory tree. According to an article published by the North Carolina Extension, dogwood anthracnose was first diagnosed in 1978. Since then, it has nearly wiped out the dogwood in many western North Carolina forests. The fungus infects wood, creating a canker which eventually causes the tree to die.

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