CORNACES. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 71 
CORNUS ALTERNIFOLIA. 
Dogwood. 
LEAVES mostly alternate, clustered at the ends of the branches. 
Cornus alternifolia, Linnxus f. Syst. ed. 13, Suppl. 125 
(1781).— Lamarck, Dict. ii. 116; J7/. i. 303. — L’Héri- 
tier, Cornus, 10, t. 6. — Ehrhart, Beztr. iti. 19. — Du Roi, 
Harbk. Baumz. ed. 2, i. 253. — Schmidt, Oestr. Baume. 
ii. 15, t. 70. — Willdenow, Berl. Bawmz. 77 ; Spec. i. 664; 
Enum. 165.— Michaux, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 93. — Persoon, 
Syn. i. 144. — Desfontaines, Hist. Arb. i. 351. — Nouveau 
Duhamel, ii. 157, t. 45. — Pursh, FU. Am. Sept. i. 109. — 
St. Pétersbourg, sér. 6, 203. — Walpers, Rep. v. 932. — 
Chapman, /7. 167. — Curtis, Rep. Geolog. Surv. N. Cur. 
1860, iii. 61.— Koch, Dendy. i. 690.— Emerson, Zrees 
Mass, ed. 2, ii. 463, t.— Lauche, Deutsche Dendr. ed. 2, 
514. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. 
ix. 90. — Coulter & Evans, Bot. Gazette, xv. 90. — Wat- 
son & Coulter, Gray’s Man. ed. 6, 215. — MacMillan, Bot. 
Rep. Geolog. Surv. Minn. 400 (Metasperm. Minn. Vail.). 
Nuttall, Gen. i. 99. — Roemer & Schultes, Syst. iii. 323; Cornus alterna, Marshall, Arbust. Am. 35 (1785). 
Mant. 251. — Elliott, Sk. i. 210.— Bigelow, 77. Boston. Cornus undulata, Rafinesque, Alsograph. Am. 61 (1838). 
ed. 2, 58. — Guimpel, Otto & Hayne, Abdild. Holz. 53, Cornus rotundifolia, Rafinesque, Alsogriph. Am. 62 
t. 43. — Hayne, Dendr. Fl. 8. — Sprengel, Syst. i. 451. — (1838). 
De Candolle, Prodr. iv. 271. — Hooker, Fl. Bor-Am. Cornus riparia, Rafinesque, Alsograph. Am. 62 (1838). 
i. 275. — Don, Gen. Syst. iii. 398. — Tausch, Regensb. Cornus riparia, var. rugosa, Rafinesque, Alsograph. Am. 
Flora, 1838, 732. — Spach, Hist. Vég. viii. 92. — Dietrich, 62 (1838). 
Syn. i. 503. — Torrey & Gray, FZ. N. Am. i. 649.—Tor- Cornus punctata, Rafinesque, Alsograph. Am. 62 (1838). 
rey, Fl. N. Y. i. 288.—C. A. Meyer, Mém. Acad. Sci. 
A flat-topped bushy tree, rarely twenty-five to thirty feet in height, with a short trunk six or 
eight inches in diameter, and long slender alternate divergent horizontal branches from which rise 
numerous short upright flower-bearing branchlets ; or often a shrub sending up several stems from the 
ground. The bark of the trunk is an eighth of an inch thick, dark reddish brown and smooth, or 
divided by shallow longitudinal fissures into narrow ridges irregularly broken transversely. The 
winter-buds are acute, light chestnut-brown, and covered with four or five imbricated ovate acute 
lustrous scales which are rounded on the back and thickened and short-pointed at the apex ; those of 
the inner ranks are accrescent, half an inch long at maturity, scarious, and more or less persistent on 
the growing shoots, which, in falling, they mark with ring-like scars. The branchlets are slender, pale 
orange-green to reddish brown when they first appear, mostly light green or sometimes brown tinged 
with green during their first winter, later turning darker green, and are marked with pale lunate leaf- 
scars and small scattered pale dots. The leaves are alternate or rarely opposite, involute in vernation, 
oval or ovate, gradually contracted at the apex into long slender points, wedge-shaped or occasionally 
somewhat rounded at the base, and obscurely crenulate-toothed on the slightly thickened and reflexed 
margins ; when they unfold they are coated on the lower surface with dense silvery white tomentum, 
and are faintly tinged with red and pilose above ; at maturity they are membranaceous, bright yellow- 
green, and glabrous or sparsely pubescent on the upper, and pale or sometimes nearly white and covered 
with appressed hairs on the lower surface, three to five inches long and two and a half to three and a 
half inches wide, with broad orange-colored midribs slightly impressed above, about six pairs of primary 
veins parallel with their sides, and slender pubescent grooved petioles which have enlarged clasping 
bases and are an inch and a half to two inches long. In the autumn the leaves turn yellow or 
yellow and scarlet. The flowers, which are produced mostly on lateral branchlets, in terminal flat 
puberulous many-flowered cymes an inch and a half to two inches and a half wide, are borne on slender 
jointed pedicels from an eighth of an inch to a quarter of an inch long, and appear from the beginning 
of May in the middle states to the end of June at the extreme north and on the high Alleghany 
