Nature Bulletin No. 490   April 20, 1957
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Daniel Ryan, President
Roberts Mann, Conservation Editor
David H. Thompson, Senior Naturalist

****:THE DOGWOODS

According to Christian legends the Flowering Dogwood was used to 
make Jesus' cross because, at that time, it grew as large and sturdy as an 
oak. During the crucifixion, sensing the dogwood's sadness at being put 
to such a cruel use, He promised that henceforth, it shall be slender, 
bent and twisted; never again to be used for a cross.

Easter and spring both stand for the coming of new life. Our floral 
parade begins early with the bizarre fleshy bloom of the skunk cabbage 
and reaches a peak in early May. However, the flowering dogwood is 
lacking. It is native throughout most of the eastern half of the United 
States, but Chicago people must take week-end trips to downstate 
Illinois or Indiana to see it in bloom. There, on slopes and in 
woodlands, beneath the still leafless taller trees, its blossoms will flush 
the landscape like an untimely May snowstorm. A single one of its 
showy blooms is a dense head of tiny greenish flowers set in a white 
flower-like cup. What appear to be four broad petals with puckered 
notches at their tips are not true petals at all but the greatly expanded 
scales of the winter flower buds. In some of the eastern and southern 
states these may be pink or rose-colored.

This dogwood has up-tilted twigs tipped with two types of buds -- all 
delicately tinged with lavender, olive, purple and red. The flower buds 
are plump and globular while the leaf buds are slim. The oval leaves, 
rich green above and pale beneath, turn to glowing scarlet and orange in 
autumn. The clusters of fruits, like miniature red plums, ripen in early 
fall and furnish food for winter birds. The brown bark, divided into 
squarish blocks, looks like alligator hide. The Indians made a red dye 
from the smaller roots. The whole year around, the flowering dogwood 
offers a wealth of color.

This little tree seldom reaches a trunk diameter of six inches but the 
wood is 90 hard, close-grained, strong and heavy that it has a number of 
special uses. Because it takes a high polish and will not fray the thread, 
it is widely used in cotton mills for shuttles, bobbing and spools. Also 
for the heads of golf clubs, jewelers' blocks and the wooden cogwheels 
in grandfather clocks.

In the Chicago region there are other species of dogwoods, almost all 
shrubby, that usually go unrecognized because at first glance they look 
nothing like the better known flowering dogwood. Like it, however, the 
veins of the leaf curve and follow the edge toward the tip. The 
commonest of these is the Gray Dogwood which stands erect, is very 
leafy, and often forms thickets higher than a man's head. It bears flat 
clusters of small white flowers in June which are followed by berry-like 
fruits that turn white and juicy in the fall. The Red-Osier Dogwood 
thrives on moist soils and shores throughout Cook County. Its stems 
gleam like red-hot pokers but a cultivated variety, the Yellow 
Dogwood, has stalks the color of butter. The dried bark of the rather 
rare Silky Dogwood or Kinnikinnik was smoked by the Indians.

Mangy dogs were washed with a brew of its bark, hence Dogwood.