Flowering Dogwood

(Cornus florida)

Family: Cornaceae

Phylum: Anthophyta

CSU Tree Map Item #6

Distribution

Cornus florida, the flowering dogwood, is a flowering tree native to eastern North America and northern Mexico. An endemic population once spanned from southernmost coastal Maine south to northern Florida and west to the Mississippi River. The tree is commonly planted as an ornamental in residential and public areas because of its showy bracts and interesting bark structure.

By Elbert L. Little, Jr., U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, and others - USGS Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center, Digital Representations of Tree Species Range Maps from "Atlas of United States Trees" by Elbert L. Little, Jr. (and other publications), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29090993

Leaves

By Krzysztof Golik - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77244749

Flowering

By Björn S... - Flowering Dogwood - Cornus florida, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74140132

Fruit

By No machine-readable author provided. Koba-chan assumed (based on copyright claims). - No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=379532

Questions

Using the bark descriptors given in the handout, describe the type of bark this tree has.

Take a leaf from the tree (one leaf per group) and gently tear it in half, slowly pulling the two halves apart – what do you observe?  What might be the cause of this phenomenon?  This is characteristic of the Cornus genus.