Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. V 
NO. 9 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
14 1920 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. JUNE 19, 1919 
Cornus kousa. This is the eastern Asiatic representative of the 
Flowering Dogwood of the eastern states ( Cornus Jiorida) and of the 
Flowering Dogwood of the northwest ( Cornus Nuttallii). Cornus kousa 
was one of the Japanese plants which reached the United States in 
the early years of Japanese plant introduction into this country and 
although it has never become common in American gardens it is occa¬ 
sionally seen in the neighborhood of Boston and New York. The white 
bracts which surround the head of flowers and are the conspicuous 
feature of the inflorescence of all the Cornels of this group are nar¬ 
rowed and placed further apart on Cornus kousa than on our eastern 
Flowering Dogwood, and are long-pointed, and not as in the American 
plant rounded or emarginate at the apex. On the American plant the 
end of the bract is often discolored, while in the Asiatic plant the 
bracts are pure white to the tips. The flower-buds of Cornus jiorida 
are often killed here at the north in severe winters, but the extreme 
cold of the winter of 1917-18 did not injure those of C. kousa. The 
Japanese plants bloom several weeks later than Cornus jiorida and 
when the leaves are nearly fully grown. In Japan Cornus kousa 
sometimes becomes a small tree with a single trunk, but in this coun¬ 
try so far as we have observed it grows always as a shrub with sev¬ 
eral erect stems. Cornus kousa was found in central China by Wilson 
and plants raised from his Chinese seeds are established in the Arbor¬ 
etum. They are handsomer than the Japanese form, with longer and 
broader floral bracts set closer together and often overlapping below 
the middle. On the largest plant in the Arboretum the head of bracts 
is four inches and a half across, but in China Wilson measured them 
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