By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on May 7, 2004
It used to be that when I heard, “Dogwood is blooming in Texas,” I thought it must be early spring in deep East Texas. Now when I hear dogwood is flowering, I think, “Late spring on Cibolo Creek.”
Yes, this is the time of spring when dogwood is blooming in the Hill Country. This seems to be a good year for dogwood flowers.
But don’t look for the showy white blossoms of the flowering dogwood (Cornus florida). Those are native to East Texas. Ours are the roughleaf dogwood (Cornus drummondii). The individual creamy-white flowers are tiny, but they come in dense clusters that give the illusion of fluffy blooms two to four inches across.
A few years ago, when I started learning more about Hill Country vegetation, I was surprised to find out we have dogwood in this area. I’ve noticed that many other people, both natives and newcomers, are equally surprised when a rough-leaf dogwood is pointed out to them. It’s one of those shrubs and small trees overlooked by most folks.
Botanist Patty Leslie Pasztor asks, “How do you recognize a dogwood?” She answers her own question, “By its bark!” That answer always solicits a chuckle – or a groan – from her audience.
Nowadays I recognize the rough leaf dogwood in the wild around Boerne, because there is a certain similarity of the leaves and stems with those of the flowering dogwood, which grew where I mapped geology in East Texas many years ago.
At the moment, rough-leaf dogwood is flowering in the Boerne area, mostly in shady creek bottoms and partly sunny woodlands. It is even blooming profusely in full-sun fence rows along the road I drive to Boerne.
Rough-leaf dogwood is a shrub or small tree up to about 15 feet tall. It has elongated simple leaves, which have prominent veins on the underside. The upper surface of the leaves is slightly rough to the touch. Leaves might turn maroon in the fall. Before the leaves fall in the winter, rough-leaf dogwood puts on clusters of dense white fruit about a quarter inch in diameter. Several birds eat the fruit.
Rough-leaf dogwood occurs over most of the Edwards Plateau and Central Texas. Its range also includes North Central Texas and southern East Texas, with a few growing in the Panhandle. Judging from its Texas range, roughleaf dogwood tolerates a wide variety of soil types. In our area, of course, it does well in alkaline soils. It seems to do best where the soil is somewhat moist, at least during part of the year.
We planted some rough-leaf dogwoods in our yard to add to native understory vegetation beneath our large liveoak trees. The plants that are in a flat area with several inches of soil are growing and blooming considerably better than the rough-leaf dogwood I planted on a well-drained rocky slope.
Jill Nokes (“How to Grow Native Plants of Texas and the Southwest”) recommends rough-leaf dogwood for erosion control along stream banks and woodland slopes. Both Nokes and Sally Wasowski (“Gardening with Prairie Plants”) warn that rough-leaf dogwood may not be ideal for small landscaped areas, because it tends to form thickets by sprouting from spreading lateral roots.
So far that has not been а problem in our yard, and we are enjoying the dogwood blooms this week.
