Cornus 'Pumila'

This black-fruited dogwood of unknown provenance was known in German horticulture by the early 1880s. The name Cornus pumila, first used by Dieck (1883) in reference to plants grown by him at the Zöschen Nursery near Leipzig, was published by Koehne (1903), based on plants grown at the Späth Nursery, but the taxon is almost certainly of horticultural, probably hybrid origin. Further work is needed to establish the parentage. We treat it here as a stand-alone cultivar of uncertain origin. Schneider (1912) described it as interesting but rare; the date of its introduction beyond Germany is not known.

The distinguishing characters of Koehne’s ‘species’ are the reddish tinge to the immature leaves and the congested appearance of the foliage resulting from the short internodes (it is surpassed in this character only by Cornus alba ‘Hessei’). Contrary to some reports, the habit is not dwarfing and plants are capable of attaining a reasonable size. The sepals are also relatively long (1–1.5 mm). Finally, Koehne believed the microscopic structure of the epidermal cells on the leaf underside to be unique in the genus (hardly relevant to the practical gardener, but perhaps worthy of renewed attention from taxonomists). The leaf is very distinctive in shape, with abruptly acuminate, almost caudate, apices.

Schulz (2012) notes that the name has in recent times been misapplied to specimens of C. alba (for example at the Forstbotanischer Garten Tharandt, Saxony, Germany). Such confusion seems the likeliest explanation for the placement of C. pumila in synonymy with C. alba (e.g. POWO 17/12/2025), or as sister to C. alba or C. sericea in two phylogenetic studies based on a common DNA sample (Xiang et al. 2006; Du et al. 2023) – see also the comments in the entry for C. australis. However, C. alba and C. sericea are both white-fruited so a close relationship with C. pumila seems implausible. A hybrid origin is possible (Schulz 2012), though it would appear that material in cultivation under the name (insofar as consistently applied) represents a single clone, further justifying the application of a cultivar name.

Plants in cultivation under the name C. pumila form spreading, slow-growing shrubs, distinguished by the unusual and attractive colouration of the young foliage at the tips of branches, which is red, turning to glossy dark green as the leaves expand and passing through an intervening stage at which the green veins and red interveinal pigmentation is very distinctive. The autumnal foliage display is reported to be negligible (Missouri Botanic Garden 2025).

Not having seen the fruits, Dippel treated the taxon as C. mas var. nana Dippel, but the dwarf form of C. mas is a quite different plant (see the entry for C. mas Nana Group).