Cornus foemina Mill.

Cornus foemina Mill., more commonly grown as C. stricta, is distributed across the south-eastern United States from Virginia to Texas and south to Florida, but is very close in appearance to its more northerly relative C. racemosa, with which it was formerly united as C. candidissima Marsh by Coulter and Evans (1890). While the two species are now generally regarded as distinct, in practice they are hard to separate, particularly in the case of cultivated material seen out of its natural context. The pith character commonly cited as diagnostic – white in C. foemina, brown in C. racemosa – is not recognised in Flora of North America, which gives the colours as tan and brown respectively (white in first-year branches); similarly, branchlet pigmentation (deep red to bronze vs. pinkish-brown) and fruit colour (usually bluish, sometimes white vs. usually whitish, sometimes blue) are of limited value when attempting to resolve the identity of isolated specimens (Murrell & Poindexter 2015). On the other hand, the Flora implies that habit (not traditionally recognised as a distinguishing character) may be found helpful for identification, the stems clustering together in C. foemina, while in C. racemosa they tend to be spaced at least 20 cm apart.

The black-fruited ‘female dogwood’ of the Old World, Cornus sanguinea, has been well known to Europeans since antiquity (see the genus entry), but with growing exploration of North America from the late seventeenth century, a large number of white- or bright-blue fruited dogwoods were introduced into European cultivation. Modern growers may find it hard to become excited about most of these shrubby species, but it is clear from the testimony of Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary that in Britain – and in France, too, to judge from the slightly later treatment by Lamarck (1786) – these species were regarded as welcome additions to the (at this period still rather limited) repertoire of broadleaf shrubs, considered superior in appearance to ‘our common female dogberry’. Miller’s polynomials for all these species all began ‘Cornus foemina …’, sowing the seeds of much subsequent confusion. By the sixth edition of the Dictionary (1752), we find that Cornus foemina laurifolia, Cornus foemina Virginiana, folio angustiore and Cornus foemina, candidissimis foliis were all circulating in the nursery trade in the environs of London, these species finally achieving their more familiar epithets (C. amomum, C. foemina and C. candidissima) in the eighth and final edition (1768). Two of these species are now treated as synonyms (C. foemina Mill. = C. stricta Lam. = C. candidissima Mill.).

It is clear from earlier editions of Miller’s Dictionary that some of these species had been introduced years or decades earlier than the date of 1758 or 1759 given for them by many authors (e.g. Aiton 1789) and which is obviously based on Miller’s seventh edition of 1759, with its often confusing nomenclature. Cornus foemina, for example, was already listed in 1740 in the second edition of the vol. 2 folio, as ‘very hardy’ and ‘thriv[ing] very well in the open Air in this Climate’ (Miller 1740).

Cornus foemina is an easy-going plant that thrives in most conditions, attractive for its flowers and handsome dark-green leaves, though pest damage can result in defoliation; the fruits are not held long on the plant, but the vivid red pedicels persist (Gayraud 2013).