226 coRNACEiE. [Cornus. 



In woods, thickets, hedges aud bushy places ; abundant throughout the island. 

 Fl. June. Fr. September. Tj . 



A slender shrub, from 4 to 8 or 10 feet in height, sometimes a small tree, the 

 trunk and older branches covered with a light gray streaked or mottled bark, the 

 younger leafy shoots round, straight, erect, dark blood-red in autumn and winter, 

 a little downy towards their extremities. Leaves opposite, on short channelled 

 petioles, ovate or roundish ovate, a few occasionally broadly elliptical or nearly 

 orbicular, 2 or 3 inches long, with 9 or 1 1 depressed converging ribs (the basal 

 pair short and obscurely marked), waved and quite entire on the margin, briefly 

 mucronato-aeuminate, their points deflexed ; bright green above, sometimes edged 

 with purplish brown, somewhat paler beneath, but downy with fine, scattered, 

 erect hairs ; roughish on their upper surface with very minute close-pressed pubes- 

 cence, scarcely visible without a glass, each hair attached by its centre and bicus- 

 pidate, the points spreading flat in opposite directions : these centrally affixed 

 hairs, common, it is said, to the whole genus and several others,* occur, though 

 much more sparingly, on the under side of the leaf, mixed with the erect ones, as 

 well as on the fruit and at the back of the petals. Cyrnes terminal, solitary, 

 stalked, flattish or a little convex, Ij or 2 inches in diameter, without an invo- 

 lucre, their branches erect and slightly hairy. Flovjers white, disagreeably 

 scented, especially when just beginning to go off. Calyx very minute. Petals 

 subelliptic-lanceolate, scarcely narrowing at the base, their tips slightly incurved. 

 Stamens long, nearly erect, with pale buS'-yellow oblong anthers. Style erect, as 

 long as the stamens, suddenly enlarged into a globular form at top, bearing the 

 small, sessile, nectariferous stigma. Drupes globose, the size of small peas, black 

 and hoary, or as it were powdered with medifixt hairs, perforated at the summit 

 where the style was inserted. Seed (nut) large, very hard, depresso-globose, 2- 

 celled, with while tasteless kernels. 



The white blossoms of the Dogwood are very conspicuous in our hedges through- 

 out the month of June, and whilst its blood-red twigs relieve the monotonous 

 colouring of the winter landscape, the deep purple brown of the fading leaves adds 

 to the rich tinting of our autumnal scenery. The berries, which ripen in Septem- 

 ber, have a bitter nauseous taste and a greenish pulp, said to yield by expression 

 an oil fit for burning in lamps. The only other shrubby European species, C. 

 mascula, has red eatable fruit, now neglected, but formerly known in our gardens 

 as Cornelian Chemes, and still cultivated with us occasionally, for ornament. 



The cymes and leaves are often so covered with a white parasite as to look as 

 if dusted over with lime. 



* Torrey and Gray, Fl. of N. Amer. i. p. 649. 



