The tree’s extremely hard wood also found important uses as weavers’ shuttles and in golf club heads, the handles of chisels and mauls, and even as wedges and yokes. Early Native Americans made medicinal teas from its bark, and desperate Civil War doctors used this tea as a quinine substitute. George Washington planted it at Mount Vernon, as did Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. The Dogwood’s Place in HistoryĪmericans have long loved the dogwood. They can be found throughout the continental United States. Eleven species of dogwood are native to the United States, though many are shrubby.
The dogwood is also distinguished by its broad natural range, and by being as at home in a natural forest as it is in the home landscape. The dogwood’s lustrous green summer leaves give way to brilliant scarlet fall foliage, and even in winter the dogwood’s dark, patterned bark offers unique beauty. The durable blossoms last for three or four weeks, and the scarlet berries that follow them can linger into the winter, when they are most valued by wildlife.
But this distinction is of little importance to those who enjoy their showy spring color. To others, it is simply the most spectacular flowering tree in America.ĭespite the beauty of its spring blossoms, which appear between late March and mid-May, dogwood’s glorious petals are actually modified leaves known as bracts. This round, densely crowned tree is considered by many to be the very symbol of spring, with its magnificent white or pink blossoms. For so small a tree, often no taller than 25 feet, the dogwood holds a large place in the American imagination.
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