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Blanchan, Neltje, 1865-1918

"Wild Flowers An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors"


Other common dogwoods there are - shrubs from three to ten feet
in height - which bear flat clusters of small white flowers
without the showy petal-like bracts, imitating a corolla, as in
the two preceding species, but each little four-parted blossom
attracting its miscellaneous crowd of benefactors by association
with dozens of its counterparts in a showy cyme. Because these
flowers expand farther than the minute florets of the dwarf
cornel or the flowering dogwood, and the sweets are therefore
more accessible, all the insects which fertilize them come to the
shrub dogwoods too, and in addition very many beetles, to which
their odor seems especially attractive. ("Odore carabico o
scarabeo" - Delpino.) The ROUND-LEAVED CORNEL or DOGWOOD [now
ROUNDLEAF DOGWOOD] (C. circinata), found on shady hillsides, in
open woodlands, and roadside thickets - especially in rocky
districts - from Nova Scotia to Virginia, and westward to Iowa,
may be known by its greenish, warty twigs; its broadly ovate, or
round petioled, opposite leaves, short-tapering to a point, and
downy beneath; and, in May and June, by its small, flat, white
flower-clusters about two inches across, that are followed by
light-blue (not edible) berries.


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