Remember that television classic "The Beverly Hillbillies"? You know the story - a poor Tennessee farmer that shoots at a rabbit and hits an oil deposit. He strikes it rich and moves out of a log home in the mountains to a bazillion dollar house in Beverly Hills. A common Hoosier tree, the Dogwood, has followed the 'Hillbillies' from the country to the city. It's a wonderful example of a 'wild' tree now rooted to the urban scene.

At 20 feet tall, Dogwoods are not the giants of the forest. The plant falls in the category of 'big shrub' or 'little tree'. Dogwoods belong to a small family of trees that also includes the Black Gum. In Indiana Dogwoods are an understory tree of the forest - a tree that tolerates lots of shade. They prefer moist soils and naturally grow in association with our beech-maple and white oak forests. Let's face it, the Dogwood is a tree for the common man and it's easy to identifyl Almost everyone has seen a blooming Dogwood in a neighborhood park. In autumn Dogwood leaves 'turn' flaming red. By Christmas time Dogwood fruit, individually known as a 'drupe', are glossy red as if the tree was decorated for the season.

This tree is part of a select group of hardwoods that has opposite branching: each leaf, twig and branch paired across from another leaf, twig or branch. We often teach the phrase "MADBUCK" to recall the first letter of the names Maple, Ash, DOGWOOD, and Buckeye as the trees of the forest with this "opposite" arrangement.

Lumber from Dogwood tree had many uses back in the settlement era. Lumber from a Dogwood tree? Apparently so, as Charles Deam wrote that he measured Dogwood trees in 1918 and in 1931 that had clear boles of 10 and 5.5 feet in length! The wood from a Dogwood is light colored and close grained. Typically it was used for wedges, mallet heads and tool handles. In more recent times dogwood lumber was used in engraver's blocks and golf heads.

The Dogwood tree of today is far more valuable for its looks, not its lumber. The 'wild' Dogwood has been 'dug' out of the woods and replanted in yards since settlement of Indiana. To have a flowering Dogwood in your yard might have been a simple statement of survival, saying to community "look, we made it!"

It's the flower on the Dogwood tree that has made it a landscape favorite for over 100 years. A close look at a dogwood flower reveals not one large bloom but instead a cluster of small flowers in the middle of the white 'bracts'. The bracts are only advertising for pollinating insects like the honeybee. Ms. Bee doesn't see those petals as white. She sees the world in ultra-violet and to her the true color of a dogwood flower is gray with black markings. The markings on the bracts point directly to middle of the blossom with its nectar and pollen.

At some point in the late nineteenth century the native Dogwood became a cultivated tree and work began to improve the dogwood and its flowers for landscape applications. There are now dozens of Dogwood varieties grown across the eastern United States that feature variations on flower color, leaf color and shape, and disease resistance. A Red Dogwood may retail for as much as $60, depending on its size. Dogwoods make up 10% of total number of trees sold by retail nurseries.

Civilization has not come to the Dogwood without price. Dogwoods are shade-loving trees, but are often planted on a site where they receive too much afternoon sun. The tree struggles to survive, weakens, and finally succumbs to insect attack. A new fungal disease known as Dogwood Anthracnose has been spreading across the east for several years. This fatal infection first appears as die-back in the twigs of the tree, within a year the plant is dead. This disease is not yet a severe problem in Indiana.

Dogwoods are being replaced by disease resistant crab apple trees in many retail tree nurseries. Flowering crabs are a plant that tolerates disease, pollution and dry conditions better than the Dogwood. Many nurseries have stopped the practice of providing a replacement guarantee in planting Dogwood trees.