Dogwood, the state flower of North Carolina

How to recognize it

The flowering dogwood is a small tree, usually 15 to 25 feet tall, with a wider, rounded, spreading crown. What looks like one large flower is really a tight cluster of tiny greenish-white true flowers ringed by four white, sometimes pink, petal-like bracts about 2 inches long, each with a notch at its tip. It blooms in early spring, around March to May, before or as the leaves come out.

The leaves are opposite and oval, 2.5 to 6 inches long, with veins that curve toward the tip, and they turn red to maroon in fall. Shiny red oval fruits about half an inch long ripen in clusters from late summer into fall, and older trees have dark bark broken into small blocks.

Which dogwood?

The 1941 law names “the dogwood” and no particular species. Three dogwoods grow wild in North Carolina, the alternate-leaf, gray and flowering dogwoods, and the flowering dogwood is the one understood and pictured as the state flower.

Where it grows

The flowering dogwood is native to North Carolina and the eastern United States. It grows in all three of the state’s regions, the mountains, the Piedmont and the coastal plain, usually in the understory of deciduous woods and along forest edges, up to about 4,500 feet. It is also a popular garden tree, so it is common in yards and parks. At higher elevations, above about 1,800 feet, a disease called dogwood anthracnose is a serious threat.

Where to see it

Look for dogwoods blooming in spring in deciduous woods and woodland edges across the state, and in yards and parks.

Food for wildlife

Dogwood fruit is bitter and not eaten by people, but songbirds, wild turkeys, quail, deer, squirrels and other wildlife eat it, and the tree is a host plant for the spring azure butterfly.

The state wildflower

North Carolina also has a separate state wildflower, the Carolina lily, adopted in 2003. Its nodding, red-orange, brown-spotted flowers with swept-back petals bloom mostly in July and August, in woods from the mountains to the coast.