A dogwood flower. (UC Agriculture and Natural Resources/Contributed) White dogwood blossoms in spring. (J.
C. Lawrence/Contributed) Dogwood leaves turn red in the fall in front of green ginkgo leaves. (J.
C. Lawrence/Contributed) Cornus Florida "Stellar Pink" dogwood in bloom. (Jeanette Alosi/Contributed) Ideally, you’d be reading this in very early spring, when the dogwood bloom is beginning to work its elegant magic in the older neighborhoods fanning out from lower Bidwell Park and downtown Chico.
Their flowers bloom before dogwoods leaf out, so the blooms appear to float, suspended on slender, graceful branches. But now, although their bloom time is over for the year, the new foliage on dogwoods makes them attractive landscape trees, creating filtered shade in gardens and yards across town. There are between 30 and 100 different species of Cornus (depending upon the source one consults).
These various species of dogwood are native throughout much of earth’s temperate latitudes and boreal (subarctic) ecosystems of Eurasia and North America. China, Japan and the southeastern United States are particularly rich in native species. The best known and most widely cultivated dogwood species include: common dogwood (C.
sanguinea) of Eurasia; flowering dogwood (C. florida) of eastern North America; Pacific dogwood (C. nuttallii) of western North America: Kousa dogwood (C.
kousa) of eastern Asia, and two low-growing boreal species, the Canadian and Eurasian dwarf cornels (or bunch.
