Cornus asperifolia Michx.

Cornus asperifolia forms a medium to large shrub, its only ornamental feature being the blue or bluish-white berries borne on red pedicels in the late summer and autumn. The specific epithet refers to the rough upper surface of the leaves. The species is native to the southern Atlantic and Gulf states of the USA, from Florida and South Carolina (Zones 11 through 8), and is rarely cultivated outside the United States, though has been grown at Les Barres, Loiret, France (Demoly & Picard 2005).

Disentangling the relationships within the shrubby members of subgenus Thelycrania – all broadly similar in habit and sharing the same white cymose inflorescence – has proved a challenge for generations of botanists, the essential similarity in floral characters forcing a reliance on diagnostic niceties such as leaf pubescence, which can be difficult to quantify or variable; intermediate states are common. Molecular phylogenies have provided useful insights, but these can be complicated by hybridisation, a frequent phenomenon in Cornus.

The species has been treated by some botanists as conspecific with Cornus drummondii (which shares the scabrous leaves), but has been placed by others under C. foemina – the species was not included in the molecular study by Du et al. (2023), which might have shed light on the question. From a purely horticultural perspective, C. asperifolia has been compared with a more pubescent version of C. amomum, but with paler fruit, and pith that is notably white (Cappiello & Shadow 2005; Dirr 2009). See also Cornus drummondii.