It was quite windy this afternoon so I had a hard time getting a sharp photo but these dogwood buds are pretty cool.
Tagged With: Dogwood
Dogwood Blossoms
I know I’ve already done dogwood flowers but a) I never said I wouldn’t repeat and b) I like this picture. In the Extras gallery there’s a pink dogwood flower, as well.
Pink Flowering Dogwood
This pink flower dogwood (Cornus florida) is blooming again and it’s a lovely color. The tree is way to close to the house and eventually I need and plan to take it out. I’ve planted a Camellia japonica under it, a little further from the house, with the hope of letting that take its place. Unfortunately we had a week early in the winter with temperatures below 5°F, which were pretty hard on the not-terribly-hardy camellia and it was pretty badly damaged. It doesn’t look entirely dead, but it sure was killed back quite a bit. Still, it may pull through. I’ll need to be sure to keep it watered well in the heat of the summer and we’ll hope for the best.
Dogwood Leaf
It’s interesting that each year always feels different to the last. It’s past the middle of October and there’s hardly any fall color here yet. Surely this is much later than last year. Well, going out and taking pictures every day for a few years has a few advantages. I can go back and find pictures of fall color from previous years, not just here but in my full collection of photos. As it turns out, the maple in our back yard generally gets to be fully red fairly late in October, with pictures from October 27 both last year and the year before. So, we’ll see what it looks like in nine days and see if the colors really are significantly later this year. In the meantime, this little dogwood seedling growing in our back yard has some pretty good color. It seems to suffer quite a bit from mildew, but it’s doing fine otherwise.
Dogwood
There’s an old joke that you can easily identify dogwood by its bark but you can also spot them this time of year by the color of their leaves. The deep, burgundy color really stands out, particularly against the much more common yellow of many of our other native trees. The oaks tend to be dark orange or rusty reds. The maples range in color from bright red (as in the Japanese maples seen in yesterday’s post) to pure, electric yellow. It’s really a lovely time of year and unfortunately seems to be the shortest of the seasons. The rain last night knocked down a lot of leaves and the forecast for the coming week is for a lot more rain, so by this time next week, it may only be the oaks and beeches holding onto their drying leaves.
Dogwood
The dogwood in front of our house is in full fall color. It’s not really a good place for a tree, much too close to the house. I’ve planted a camellia near it that, if it survives, will replace it. Last winter was tough on it and all but one small branch near the base died. If it makes it through this winter it will have a chance but I guess we’ll see. If I can get a replacement growing, I’ll cut the dogwood out, but until then, I enjoy the flowers in the spring and the red leaves in the autumn.
Cornus mas
The cornel (Cornus mas, sometimes known as cornelian cherry) is an old-world dogwood that should, I believe, be grown more here. The trees are fairly slow growing and the wood is very hard and dense, actually being dense enough that it doesn’t float. This, along with ash, is the wood that was used in ancient Greece for making spears. According to the 2nd century A.D. geographer Pausanias, the Trojan horse, built by the Greeks was built of cornel from a grove of trees sacred to Apollo. For me, it’s the very early flowers, which are not much individually, as well as the cherry-like fruit that makes the tree attractive for the small garden.
Dogwood Leaves
The afternoon sun was lighting up the newly opened leaf buds on a small flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) in our back yard. I got my camera and went to take pictures but between the wind moving the stems around and the sun going behind clouds, it kept changing. I think this is my favorite of them, although the light is a bit less strong than it was in others. Our eyes are amazing in terms of their dynamic range and cameras have a much harder time with extremes of light at dark. So, in the one that’s brighter, parts are a bit washed out, although in Real Life™ it was gorgeous. This one, where the light was a bit more subdued, has the right feel. Just imagine it super-bright.
Pink Flowering Dogwood
We had rain overnight and it continued into the day, raining quite hard off and on. In the early afternoon I could hear thunder from my basement office and I lost the remote connection to one of my office computers, although the other stayed connected. I went out front, under the porch, and took a few pictures of the rain. In the few minutes that I was outside, the rain stopped. This photo was taken then, of a pink flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) growing and blooming at the front of our house. I loved the way the drops of water were glistening on the branches. A few minutes later I went out back and half the sky—to the south and west—was blue, while the other half—to the north and east—was still an ominous grey. The thunder faded into the distance as the storm moved on.
Flowering Dogwood
I recently had a photo of dogwood leaves (see Thursday, April 09, 2020) which got some positive feedback. This is a flower on the same tree, a seedling that’s been growing on the edge of a flower bed in our back yard. I’m of two minds about this tree. On the one hand, any flowering tree has merit. On the other it’s not really where I’d want a flowering tree. There was a large silver maple (Acer saccharinum, not to be confused with Acer saccharum, the sugar maple) here but we had it cut down because it was large enough and leaning towards our house enough that we got very nervous every time there was a storm. We have a perennial bed where it once was, the this tree is right on the edge of that.
Dogwood Petal
We had some significant rain today. I don’t mind too much, as it’s spring and it’s the time of year you expect rain. The ground gets good and soaked and the plants really enjoy it. Things are greening up all over. The pink dogwood in front of our house is just about finished blooming and this rain storm is speeding up the petal drop. I really love water on flowers, though, so when I went out this evening, that’s what I looked for. The forecast is for more rain on Saturday and then warm and sunny on Sunday. We’ll see, of course.
Kousa Dogwood
It’s kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa) time in the neighborhood. These trees bloom later than the native flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) and in general have fewer problems here. They make quite handsome trees of a good size for a suburban yard. They flowers are followed by interesting fruit so they have two seasons of interest, which is nice. They also have interesting bark. The main thing, though, is that they aren’t killed by dogwood anthracnose, which is pretty hard on the C. florida trees. C. kousa is also a bit hardier, although that’s not a real issue here. But the disease problem really is.
Dogwood Porthole
I happened to have my camera with me at church this morning and I thought the view through the circular window at the front of the sanctuary was really nice today. We normally sit on the left side of the sanctuary but we were late getting to church and attendance was up a bit so we had to go over to the right side to find seats. I was happy that we did because the view was so nice. There are dogwoods on the hillside outside the church, below the upper parking lot. These dogwoods are in bloom and the sun was on them. I purposefully exposed this for the light levels outside, so the nearly white interior walls show up as very dark here. The small amount of green in amongst the white flowers sets them off very nicely. The beautiful weather encouraged us to go outdoors for a while after church, as well, so the next post is from the same day.
Dogwood Portal
I know I posted a similar picture to this last year, on Sunday, April 24, 2022, titled Dogwood Porthole. I entered this year’s title before looking that up to see what I used and was happy that I came up with something slightly different, even if it’s pretty close to the same. At the front of the church is this circular window and on the hill outside it a flowering dogwood (Cornus florida). This year’s photo is about a week ahead of last year’s and that seems about right for the weather we’ve been having. Everything is slightly earlier, although probably not outside the normal range of dates. Last year we had a fairly hard, killing frost in late April but I think we’re probably in the clear this year. I hope so, anyway.
Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida)
The common name for our most commonly planted, native dogwood is “flowering dogwood’ (Cornus florida). That’s a little deceptive, since all dogwoods—that is all Cornus species—flower. But that’s what they are called and that’s the one of the things about common names. They have some significant health issues, including dogwood anthracnose, which is fairly serious. They are also susceptible to powdery mildew, leaf spot, canker, root rot and leaf and twig blight. Stressed trees become vulnerable to borers. Nevertheless, when they are in bloom, as they are right now, they can hold their own against our other flowering trees. There are pink blooming varieties that I think are even better, although it’s hard to complain about something as lovely as this. It should be said that they also generally have terrific fall color.
Cornus kousa (Kousa Dogwood)
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, we went to the National Arboretum. The main purpose of the trip was to see the rose species in bloom and we enjoyed that. We also walked through the National Herb Garden. We skipped the Bonsai this time, because it was fairly crowded. We walked through the azalea collection and to the top of Mount Hamilton. Sadly the boxwood and peony section was closed for pest control. We drove to the far corner of the arboretum and walked through the dogwood collection. There was quite a varied collection and I took some good notes (in the form of photographs of both trees and tags). This one, a standard kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa) is a lovely example of the species and I think it would make an excellent puzzle.
Dogwood Blossoms
This is the third year I’ve taken basically this same picture. This circular window is in the front of our church and for a week or two each year the dogwoods on the hill outside give us a show. They bloomed earlier last year and my picture was from April 16. In 2022 it was on April 24. So although the blooms this year seem earlier than previous years, the dogwoods, at least, are not. It reminded me that last year (on May 7) we went to the National Arboretum and really enjoyed their dogwood collection. I don’t know if we’ll be able to make it there in the next week or two, but that would be nice.