DOGWOODS

Our farm in the Ozarks had a thick, twenty-acre oak and cedar forest sprinkled with dogwood trees. Blooming in the spring, the dogwoods looked like slender, teenage girls with flowers in their hair. They dotted the woods with bright beacons of white blossoms—some scatter beside the little creek that bubbled awake from its winter sleep. Later, flowers gone, the little trees faded into the background, but burst forth again in the fall with bright red berries that nourished the birds through the winter.

They tree looks nothing like a dog so where did the name dogwood Cornus florida come from? The wood of the dogwood is quite hard and has been used to make the heads of golf clubs. Some say the Celtics used it to make a sturdy tool called a dag or dagwood. Another source reports that the Cherokee Indians saw the trees as the homes of little guardian gnomes they called the Dogwood People. Some say it was the wood used to make the cross for the crucifixion of Jesus.

I prefer to see it as the lovely tree that heralds the coming of spring, my favorite time of the year (next to fall, of course.)