XXII. THE FLOWERING DOGWOOD. 413 



Section Second. — Trees, with flowers in heads, surrounded by 

 whorls of colored, petal-like leaves. 



Sp. G. The Flowering Dogwood. C. florida. L. 



Fruit and leaves figured in Abbott's Insects of Georgia, II, Plate 73. Repre- 

 sented in Audubon's Birds, in flower, I, Plate 8 ; in fruit, I, Plate 73 ; the 

 leaves, II, Plate 122. Michaux, Sylva, leaves, flowers and ripened fruit, 

 I, Plate 48. Bigelow's Medical Botany, Plate 28. 



The Flowering Dogwood is the most beautiful and showy 

 of its genus. The flowers are very numerous, and when they 

 are expanded in May, the tree is conspicuous at a great dis- 

 tance, shining through the woods, or showing like a flower 

 among the green delicate foliage. It is a round-headed, small 

 tree, usually twelve or fifteen feet high, but often rising to 

 twenty-five or thirty, with a diameter of nine or ten inches. 

 The recent shoots are of a grayish or purplish green, covered 

 with a fine, soft, dusty down ; those of the previous year are 

 purple, marked with rings, afterwards becoming a light gray, 

 which, in the larger branches, is closely striate with brown. 

 The stem is rough, with short, broken ridges, produced by 

 crooked furrows, between which the bark is sometimes divided 

 in a somewhat regular manner into small, square, polygonal, or 

 roundish plates. 



The leaves are large, four or five inches long, and two or three 

 wide, of a round-oval form, with an abrupt, prolonged termina- 

 tion, and abruptly tapering at base to a short, channelled foot- 

 stalk. They are entire, smooth above, with depressions at the 

 nerves, whitish beneath, hairy along the mid-rib and veins, 

 and with scattered, bicuspidate hairs between. 



In May, or the beginning of June, it is decked with a profu- 

 sion of large, showy, white flowers, forming a conspicuous orna- 

 ment of the early summer woods. 



The flowers are at the ends of the branches, supported by a 

 club-shaped footstalk. They are twelve or more in a head, sur- 

 rounded by a whorl of four large, floral leaves, usually taken 

 for the flower and constituting its principal beauty. Each floral 

 leaf is petal-like, nerved, obovate, wedge-shaped at base, round- 



