Dogwood

Flowering dogwood is a small deciduous tree of eastern North America and northern Mexico, reaching about ten metres and often spreading wider than it is tall. Its oval leaves turn a deep red-brown in autumn. What look like four large white petals in spring are in fact bracts, notched at the tip, which ring a tight head of tiny greenish-yellow flowers; some garden cultivars carry pink or almost red bracts. Clusters of bright red berries follow in late summer and feed many birds, though they are poisonous to people. The hard, dense wood has made mallets, tool handles, golf club heads and butcher's blocks, the tree has given inks and scarlet dyes, and Native American peoples used its bark, root bark and flowers as medicine, the Houma against malaria. Its name may come from its use in treating dogs with mange. It is the state tree and flower of Virginia. Folklore has long credited dogwoods with strong protective power: in the Balkans dogwood was worn as an amulet and laid in cradles to keep witches away, and in parts of Spain its branches served as divining rods. In medieval Germany a handkerchief dipped in dogwood sap and carried on Midsummer's Day was believed to make a wish come true, a charm Cunningham sets on Midsummer Eve, and its leaves or wood go into protective amulets.