The Seasons Go Round and Round

The dogwood is a thing of beauty in the early Spring. Pale green leaves form around a silvery bud on the bare crooked branches, and then suddenly there is the mass of flowers.


They are an especially lovely thing to see in the deep woods, and from a distance it looks like a bit lace dropped into the gloom of the still sleeping forest. Just as people trek to the Northeast to see the Fall colors, local folk are fond of taking drives out into the National Forest in the early Spring to see the dogwood and redbud in bloom.

And then the glory fades, the petals wither and drop off and the leaves continue to grow and the dogwood looks just like any other tree. But as summer fades into fall, the dogwood is one of the first trees to put on its fall clothes...


and the real reason for those lovely flowers appears...



The potential for next generation...



And indeed, the dogwood does reproduce itself quite well, almost as well as the proverbial rabbit. These berries are very attractive to the birds, which eat them and then poop them out; it's part of the plan...the seed requires passage through the bird's gut to remove an outer coating so that it can sprout.