Plant: Cloud Nine - Dogwood Tree

Plant description

Cloud Nine is a selection of the native flowering dogwood with wide, overlapping white bracts. The species is a spreading, rounded understory tree 15 to 25 feet tall and 15 to 30 feet wide that blooms in early spring before leaf out, carries glossy red drupes in fall and turns red to reddish purple. It prefers partial shade, especially afternoon shade, in moist, well drained, acidic soil high in organic matter. Songbirds and small mammals eat the fruit and it is the larval host for the spring azure butterfly.

Flowers

Blooms in early spring before leaf out; the true flowers are small, green and insignificant, surrounded by four petal like bracts that give the appearance of one large flower.

Foliage

Simple opposite leaves 3 to 6 inches long with entire margins and six to seven pairs of veins that curve from the base of the leaf to the tip, turning red to reddish purple in fall.

Fruit

Glossy bright red oval drupes about half an inch long in tight clusters of three or four, bitter and inedible to people but heavily eaten by birds.

Bark & stems

Attractive dark gray, brown or nearly black bark broken into small scaly blocks as the tree matures; young stems are red to purple and smooth.

Light

Morning Sun, Dappled/Filtered Light

Pruning

Prune after it flowers but before next year's flower buds form in July.

Native range

Southeastern Canada through eastern North America to eastern Mexico

Plant details