![]() The stunning, layered branching clothed in big, billowy white or pink blooms has inspired gardeners, poets, musicians, and aspiring grooms from time immemorial. ![]() Let’s just get this one out of the way right off the bat: In the most-beautiful-small-tree-in-bloom contest, it is hard to beat flowering dogwood regardless of which cultivar you pick. Rather than take all the hate mail myself for leaving out the zillion or so dogwoods that didn’t make the cut, I reached out to a handful of my colleagues to put together a killer list of dogwoods worth growing. ![]() elliptica, Zones 7–9), and both opposite- and alternate-leaved species? They range across the northern hemisphere from Mexico to the Arctic Circle and are present in much of Europe and Asia-even into the northwest tip of Iran. canadensis, Zones 2–6), an evergreen tree ( C. Indeed, can you name another genus that includes not only all the shrub and tree forms we know and love but also an herbaceous perennial ( C. Pruning Spring-Flowering Trees in the Southĭogwoods are a diverse and varied group. I can just hear the other dogwoods protesting in the corner as the decaying produce flies overhead. Even the common name, flowering dogwood, is inexcusably presumptive. But that view is as narrow as Saul Steinberg’s 1976 tongue-in-cheek New Yorker cover that shows New York City as the center of the world, with everything else summarily disappearing into one-point perspective. ![]() To many, of course, “dogwood” means just one thing: Cornus florida. Out come the rotten cabbages and tomatoes. The fastest way to start a horticultural food fight is to lock eight plant geeks in a room and ask a simple question: “What’s the best dogwood out there?” Even those who have literally written the book on the subject are given no quarter. ![]()
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