Kousa Dogwood
/Our Missouri house came with a kousa dogwood – an Asian dogwood. It does not fit my ‘plant natives’ goal but I’m leaving it. During the winter, when its leaves are gone, I always notice that it has a nest or two in it, so it does provide shelter for breeding birds. I also like that it flowers and produces interesting seeds.
This spring I happened to take some closer looks at the terminal buds – noticed that they have a covering that splits in the spring – forming a little hat on the buds!
The hat eventually falls off, and the buds begin the process of enlarging and eventually opening. I’ll try to catch a series over the next few weeks to show what happens to the buds.
I am not doing formal phenology logging on the tree, but my monitoring for eastern redbuds, common hackberry, American beautyberry, and red buckeye has increased my awareness of the phenological phases of other plants. For example – my hybrid maple is blooming right now!
