_Dogwood Family_
Shrubs or trees with simple, opposite, verticillate or alternate
leaves, usually entire; flowers in cymes, heads, or rarely solitary;
sepals and petals 4 or 5, stamens as many as the petals or more
numerous and inserted with them; fruit a drupe.
[Sidenote: =Cornus canadensis intermedia= Farr. _Dwarf Cornel.
Bunch-berry._]
Smooth, herbaceous from a nearly horizontal rootstock, woody only
at the base; flowering stems, erect, scaly, 5—7 inches high. Leaves
verticillate at the summit of the stem or sometimes 1 or 2 pairs
of opposite ones below, sessile, oval, ovate or obovate, smooth or
minutely appressed, pubescent, acute at each end or sometimes rounded
at the base, entire, 1—3 inches long. Flowers small, capitate, purple,
surrounded by a white involucre of 4—6 petaloid-ovate bracts, ⅓—¾ of
an inch long; stamens alternate with the petals; styles exserted, deep
purple; fruit globose, ⅓ of an inch in diameter in a close head; bright
red.
Common throughout the region in moist woods flowering in early summer.
[Sidenote: =Cornus stolonifera= Michx. _Red-stemmed Dogwood._]
Shrub 3—16 feet high, usually stoloniferous, the twigs smooth
and bright reddish-purple or the youngest finely hairy. Leaves
slender-petioled, ovate, ovate-lanceolate or oval, acute or short
acuminate, rounded or narrowed at the base, finely close-hairy above,
white or whitish and sparingly hairy beneath or sometimes smooth on
both surfaces, 1—5 inches long. Flowers in flat-topped cymes, 1—2
inches broad, petals white, less than ¼ of an inch long; berries white
or whitish.
In moist places and along streams and river banks throughout the
region; an attractive shrub, sometimes forming thickets of considerable
size, the red stems contrasting beautifully with the dark green leaves;
flowering in June.