The Common Dogwood, Cornus sanguinea, is a species of dogwood

Dogwood

The genus Cornus is a group of about 30-60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods. Most dogwoods are deciduous trees or shrubs, but a few species are nearly herbaceous perennial subshrubs, and a few of the woody species are evergreen...

 native to most of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and western Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, occurring north to southern England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and southern Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

, and east to the Caspian Sea

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...

. It is widely grown as an ornamental plant

Ornamental plant

Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as house plants, for cut flowers and specimen display...

.

Description

It is a medium to large deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...

 shrub

Shrub

A shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants may become either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience...

, growing 2 – tall, with dark greenish-brown branches and twigs. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are opposite, 4 – long and 2–4 cm (0.78740157480315–1.6 ) broad, with an ovate to oblong shape and an entire margin; they are green above, slightly paler below, and rough with short stiff pubescence. The hermaphrodite

Plant sexuality

Plant sexuality covers the wide variety of sexual reproduction systems found across the plant kingdom. This article describes morphological aspects of sexual reproduction of plants....

 flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s are small, 5 – diameter, with four creamy white petals, produced in clusters 3 – diameter, and are insect pollinated. The fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 is a globose black berry

Berry

The botanical definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary. Grapes are an example. The berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. They may have one or more carpels with a thin covering and fleshy interiors....

 5 – diameter, containing a single seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

. The berries are sometimes called "dogberries".

Ecology

It prefers moderate warmth in sunny places, though it can tolerate shade and in the more southern areas of its distribution area grows in the mountains. In cooler areas such as Scandinavia it grows at sea level.

It requires light, often alkaline soils. The species spreads by seeds and stolon

Stolon

In biology, stolons are horizontal connections between organisms. They may be part of the organism, or of its skeleton; typically, animal stolons are external skeletons.-In botany:...

s. Its natural range covers most of Europe and western Asia. It is especially abundant in riversides, especially in shady areas and ravines. It grows in the margins of forests or unforested areas as woods in regeneration, prickly woodland fringes, with other thorny shrub species (for example Clematis vitalba

Clematis vitalba

Clematis vitalba is a shrub of the Ranunculaceae family.-Description:Clematis vitalba is a climbing shrub with branched, grooved stems, deciduous leaves, and scented greeny-white flowers with fluffy underlying sepals...

, Crataegus monogyna, Malus sylvestris

Malus sylvestris

Malus sylvestris, the European wild apple, is a species of Malus , native to Europe from as far south as Spain, Italy and Greece to as far north as Scandinavia and Russia. Its scientific name means "forest apple", and the truly wild tree has thorns.In the past, M. sylvestris was thought to be an...

, Prunus spinosa

Prunus spinosa

Prunus spinosa is a species of Prunus native to Europe, western Asia, and locally in northwest Africa. It is also locally naturalised in New Zealand and eastern North America....

, Rubus idaeus

Rubus idaeus

Rubus idaeus is a red-fruited species of Rubus native to Europe and northern Asia and commonly cultivated in other temperate regions. A closely related plant in North America, sometimes regarded as the variety Rubus idaeus var...

, Rubus ulmifolius

Rubus ulmifolius

Rubus ulmifolius is a species of wild blackberry known by the English common name elmleaf blackberry or thornless blackberry and the Spanish common name zarzamora. It is native to Europe and North Africa, and it is widely known elsewhere as an introduced species and sometimes a noxious weed...

etc)

It reproduces by seed and root sprouts, which makes it effectively tending to occupy areas of land, establishing high density, so that, depending on circumstances, it forms dense groves and can be invasive.

Uses

The leaves provide food for some animals, including Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...

 such as the case-bearer moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 Coleophora anatipennella

Coleophora anatipennella

Coleophora anatipennella is a moth of the case-bearer family . It is the type species of its genus and, via that, of its family....

. Dogberries are eaten by some mammals and many birds. Many frugivorous passerine

Passerine

A passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders: with over 5,000 identified species, it has roughly...

s find them irresistible, and prefer them over fruits grown by humans. The plant is thus often grown in organic gardening and permaculture

Permaculture

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...

 to prevent harm to orchard

Orchard

An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit or nut-producing trees which are grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive...

 crops, while benefitting from the fact that even frugivorous birds will hunt pest insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s during the breeding season, as their young require much protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

 to grow.

Garden varieties are often called "winter fire" because the leaves turn orange-yellow in autumn and then fall to reveal striking red-tipped, orange-yellow winter stems.

The straight woody shoots produced by the plant can be used as prods, skewers or arrows. The prehistoric archer known as Ötzi the Iceman

Ötzi the Iceman

Ötzi the Iceman , Similaun Man, and Man from Hauslabjoch are modern names for a well-preserved natural mummy of a man who lived about 5,300 years ago. The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy. The nickname comes from the...

, discovered in 1991 on the border between Italy and Austria, was carrying arrows made from dogwood.