Cornus florida

Cornus florida, the flowering dogwood, is a species of flowering tree in the family Cornaceae 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. The flowering dogwood is usually included in the dogwood genus Cornus as Cornus florida L., although it is sometimes treated in a separate genus as Benthamidia florida (L.) Spach. Less common names for C. florida include American dogwood, Florida dogwood, Indian arrowwood, Cornelian tree, white cornel, white dogwood, false box, and false boxwood. Two subspecies are generally recognized: Flowering dogwood is a small deciduous tree growing to high, often wider than it is tall when mature, with a trunk diameter of up to . A 10-year-old tree will stand about tall. The leaves are opposite, simple, ovate, long and broad, with an apparently entire margin (actually very finely toothed, under a lens); they turn a rich red-brown in fall. Flowering dogwood attains its greatest size and growth potential in the Upper South, sometimes up to 40 feet in height. At the northern end of its range, heights of 30–33 feet are more typical. Hot, humid summer weather is necessary for new growth to harden off in the fall. The maximum lifespan of C. florida is about 80 years. The flowers are individually small, inconspicuous, and a hermaphrodite, with four, greenish-yellow petals (not bracts) long. Around 20 flowers are produced in a dense, rounded, umbel-shaped inflorescence, or flower-head, in diameter. The flower-head is surrounded by four conspicuous large white, pink or red bracts (not petals), each bract long and broad, rounded, and often with a distinct notch at the apex. When in the wild they can typically be found at the forest edge and frequently on dry ridges.