XXIL. THE FLOWERING DOGWOOD. Al3 
SEcTION Seconp.— Trees, with flowers in heads, surrounded by 
whorls of colored, petai-like leaves. 
Sp. 6. Tse FLowerine Docewoon. C. fidrida. L. 
Fruit and leaves figured in Abbott’s Insects of Georgia, II, Plate 73. Repre- 
sented in Audubon’s Birds, in flower, f, Plate 8; in fruit, I, Plate 73; the 
leaves, IT, Plate 122. Michaux, Sylva, leaves, flowers and ripened fruit, 
I, Plate 48. Buigelow’s Medical Botany, Plate 28. 
The Flowermg Dogwood 1s the most beantitul 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. 
Tihe stem is rough, with short, brokcn ridges, produced by 
crooked furrows, hetween 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 morc 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- 
