Flowering dogwood

The flowering dogwood is a showy small tree native to eastern North America. It is one of the most popular of all small ornamental flowering trees. Like most dogwoods, it has opposite, simple leaves. The tree is extremely showy when in flower, but what people assume to be the flowers are actually showy bracts below the nondescript green flowers.

Flowering dogwood in bloom

While the wild trees are white-flowering, this tree has been bred to also have pink flowers, some even almost a true red.

Pink-flowering dogwood

Flowering dogwood does best horticulturally when it has shade from the west but has good morning sun. It does not do well when exposed to intense heat sources such as adjacent parking lots or air conditioning compressors. While a fungus has decimated many wild stocks of flowering dogwood, domestic landscape plantings have generally not been affected because of better air circulation and less humid conditions.