Cornus controversa Seeds | Giant Dogwood
LATIN NAME: Cornus controversa
COMMON NAME: Giant Dogwood
Plant Profile
The Giant Dogwood is a tall deciduous tree of the dogwood family from the moist mountain forests of China, Japan, Korea and the Himalaya, and in the wild it is a big tree, passing twenty metres with a straight trunk and a broad crown built of distinctly horizontal, storeyed branches. In June the tiers carry wide, flat clusters of small white flowers that pollinators work steadily for two weeks, and by late summer these become small blue-black fruits hanging in the leaf axils.
The dark green, oval leaves turn plum-red to purple in autumn, and in winter the layered branch structure and the smooth, grey bark keep the tree’s character visible. It is a forest tree first and a garden tree second, and in a large garden it reads as a piece of that forest.
Science & Biotechnology
Its taxonomy has a footnote worth knowing: the species has been segregated by some botanists into its own genus as Bothrocaryum controversum, and the molecular studies that reshaped the dogwood family have tested that split more than once, with current consensus returning it to a broad Cornus. One error deserves correction because reference lists repeat it: the astringent tonic fruit and the iridoid-glycoside chemistry of the drug Shan Zhu Yu belong to the Asian cornelian, Cornus officinalis, not to this tree, whose fruits are small, bird-oriented and not a drug item. Ecological studies of its native forests record it as a component of moist mountain woodland, where its fruit feeds a seasonal wave of birds.
In cultivation the species has given the trade its famous variegated clone, and the green species itself remains the bigger, tougher, more architectural plant of the two.
Uses & Benefits
In the garden it is a large, architectural specimen: a lawn or park tree whose tiered silhouette needs open space, a woodland-edge tree that bridges garden and forest, and a quiet provider of flowers, fruit and bird cover through the season. It is bigger and tougher than its variegated clone, and it asks for less.
The blue-black fruits are cleared by thrushes and waxwings within days of ripening, the flat flower clusters feed early-summer pollinators, and the layered branches hold nesting birds. Its timber is pale and has local craft use, but the garden is where it earns its place.
Growing from Seed
Dogwood seed waits: sow into a free-draining compost and leave the pots outdoors through two winters, or warm-stratify for three months and then cold for the same before spring sowing, and expect germination to straggle. Keep the trays shaded and just moist, and be patient rather than discarding a quiet tray too early.
Grow the seedlings on in bright, airy conditions, pot on deep, and line out for two or three years. Plant out in autumn into deep, moist, well-drained soil in sun or light shade, spacing for the eventual twenty-metre crown. Water through the first two summers; after that the tiers build themselves.
Our Take
The forest-sized wedding-cake tree: tiered, tough and bigger than its expensive variegated clone, with a fruit crop for the birds and a shape for the winter garden.
Related Reading
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