Addisonia 17 



(Plate 89) 



CORNUS OFFICINALIS 

 Japanese Early Dogwood 



Native of Japan 

 Family Cornaceab Dogwood Family 



Cornus officinalis Sieb. & Zucc, FI. Jap. 1: 100. 1838., 



A shrub or small tree up to fifteen feet tall, of rather dense habit, 

 with ascending branches, and yellow flowers, preceding the leaves, 

 in clusters terminating the branchlets. The opposite leaves, with 

 petioles a half inch long or less, have the blades elliptic to ovate, 

 rounded or acute at the base, acuminate at the apex, rather dark 

 green and glabrous above, paler and appressed-pubescent beneath; 

 they measure two to three inches long and three quarters to one and 

 a half inches wide, and have five or six curved nerves on each side, 

 the axils of which, on the lower surface, are furnished with dense 

 masses of golden-brown hairs. The yellow flowers are in clusters of 

 usually twenty or more; they are subtended by yellowish bracts 

 marked with brown, appressed-pubescent, and shorter than the 

 hairy pedicels. The flower-parts are in fours ; the calyx is appressed- 

 pubescent, the four lobes very short; the petals are reflexed, ovate- 

 lanceolate, acute, about three sixteenths of an inch long. The four 

 stamens are shorter than the petals. The style is slender and about 

 as long as the stamens. The fruit is scarlet, oblong, about a half 

 inch long and with a diameter a little more than half the length. 



This, a native of the mountainous regions of Japan, is closely related 

 to another species, of southeastern Europe and the Orient, Cornus 

 Mas, known as the Cornelian cherry. The Japanese species may be 

 readily distinguished by the dense tufts of brown hairs in the axils 

 of the lower stuface of the leaves. Cornus officinalis, as it occurs in 

 the collections of the New York Botanical Garden, compared with 

 Cornus Mas, is a denser more symmetric shrub or small tree and pro- 

 duces flowers much more freely, features which make it more valuable 

 as a decorative plant. The flowers appear usually early in April, 

 before the leaves, the fruit ripening in the early fall. The specimen, 

 now in the fruticetum, from which the illustration was prepared has 

 been in the collections of the New York Botanical Garden since 1900. 

 This species may be propagated from seeds, which usually germinate 

 the second year after sowing, or by grafting. 



In the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere the genus 

 Cornus is found rather widely distributed; there is one species known 

 from Peru. Restricted to those forms which have no involucre, or 



