[Reprinted from Journal of the New York Hotanical Garden, July, 1913] 



WILD PLANTS NEEDING PROTECTION* 



9. "Flowering Dogwood" (Cynoxylon floridum) 



With Plate CXX 



One of the new enemies of the dcgwccd is the automobile. 

 It is not unusual in the vicinity of New York to see great branches 

 torn off, with all the flowers drooping, being borne into the city, 

 by people in automobiles. Such ruthless anc wanton destruction 

 of this most decorative tree of our woodlands and hillsides is 

 unpardonable and should be punished as a misdemeanor, for it 

 is undoubtedly true, in most cases, that the depredators do not 

 own the trees that they destroy, and have taken the branches from 

 either some public park or private land. 



The dog\\'ood attains a height of about ic-20 feet with a 

 maximum trunk of 40 feet usually with low and bread, spreading 

 branches. At the summit of each twig there is a cluster of small 

 yellowish green flowers about twenty to thirty in number, sur- 

 rounded by four large showy white bracts, which sometimes 

 attain 2-3 inches in length and 1-2 inches in breadth. They 

 are formed by the expansion of the involucre v^hich surrounds the 

 flowers in the bud. They are usually notched at the apex, 

 often tinted with red and occasionally quite pink. The flowers 

 are small, crowded together, with four recurved greenish yellow 

 petals, attached in the mouth of the tubular 4-lobed calyx; the 

 stamens are four, attached to and falling with the corolla and 



* Illustrated by the aid of the Stokes Fund for the Preservation of Native 

 Plants. 



133 



