Nobody is sure why the dogwood is named after dogs
English speakers called it the dog-tree before 1548, and by 1614 it was the dogwood. One old theory says the word was really dag, a skewer, because butchers made skewers from its hard wood. Another says its berries were considered fit only for a dog. Neither explanation has been proved.
Cornus includes roughly 30 to 60 species of trees and shrubs spread through the cool and cold zones of North America and Eurasia; China, Japan and the American Southeast hold especially many. Some reach South America. Most are deciduous; a few are evergreen or almost herbaceous, like the low bunchberries of northern forests. The Latin cornus named the cornelian cherry, and may connect to the word for horn. Chaucer knew the tree by another name, whippletree, probably from its waving branches.
Look for simple leaves whose veins curve round to follow the leaf edge. Flowers have four parts. In the flowering dogwood of eastern North America, the true blossoms are tiny and bunched, while what look like big white petals are four to six bracts around them. Fruits are drupes. Species in the subgenus Cornus bear edible ones: the Kousa dogwood's taste like a sweet tropical pudding, and the carnelian-red cornelian cherry has been eaten in Eastern Europe for centuries and is very high in vitamin C. Berries of the Swida group are mildly toxic to people, though birds relish them, and over 32 kinds of game birds eat dogwood seeds.
The wood is dense, with a density of 0.79, and fine-grained. That made it prized for loom shuttles, tool handles, roller skates, early laminated tennis rackets and golf club heads, yet it is rarely sold as lumber, so users usually fell their own. American pioneers peeled and chewed the twigs into toothbrushes, and the tannin-rich bark was used as a folk substitute for quinine.
Gardeners across the United States plant dogwoods almost everywhere except the hottest, driest regions. Shrubby species with vivid red or yellow winter stems, such as Cornus stolonifera, are planted along highways. In northwest Europe, however, the flowering dogwood rarely blooms well, because it lacks the sharp winters and hot summers it needs.
Source: Cornus
