The Red Osier Dogwood 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 throughout northern and western North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 from Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

 east to Newfoundland, south to Durango

Durango

Durango officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Durango is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is located in Northwest Mexico. With a population of 1,632,934, it has Mexico's second-lowest population density, after Baja...

 and Nuevo León

Nuevo León

Nuevo León It is located in Northeastern Mexico. It is bordered by the states of Tamaulipas to the north and east, San Luis Potosí to the south, and Coahuila to the west. To the north, Nuevo León has a 15 kilometer stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border adjacent to the U.S...

 in the west, and Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

 and Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

 in the east. Other names include Red Willow, Kinnikinnick, Redstem Dogwood, Redtwig Dogwood, Red-rood, American Dogwood, Creek Dogwood, and (subsp. occidentalis) Western Dogwood.

Description

In the wild, it commonly grows in areas of damp soil, such as wetlands.
It is a medium to tall 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 1.5–4 m tall and 3–5 m wide, spreading readily by underground 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 to form dense thickets. The branches and twigs are dark red, although wild plants may lack this coloration in shaded areas. 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, 5–12 cm long and 2.5–6 cm broad, with an ovate to oblong shape and an entire margin; they are dark green above and glaucous

Glaucous

Glaucous is used to describe the pale grey or bluish-green appearance of the surfaces of some plants, as well as in the names of birds, such as the Glaucous Gull , Glaucous-winged Gull , Glaucous Macaw , and Glaucous...

 below; fall color is commonly bright red to purple. The 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 (5–10 mm diameter), dull white, in clusters 3–6 cm diameter. 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

Sphere

A sphere is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space, such as the shape of a round ball. Like a circle in two dimensions, a perfect sphere is completely symmetrical around its center, with all points on the surface lying the same distance r from the center point...

 white 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....

 5–9 mm diameter.

Cultivation

Cornus sericea is a popular ornamental shrub that is often planted for the red coloring of its twigs in the dormant season.

Uses

Native Americans

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 used the berries as food, both fresh and dried and cooked.

Some Plateau Indian tribes ate the berries to treat colds

Common cold

The common cold is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory system, caused primarily by rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. Common symptoms include a cough, sore throat, runny nose, and fever...

 and slow bleeding.

Known as cansasa in Lakota

Lakota language

Lakota is a Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes. While generally taught and considered by speakers as a separate language, Lakota is mutually understandable with the other two languages , and is considered by most linguists one of the three major varieties of the Sioux...

, the inner bark of the red osier dogwood was also used by the Lakota and other Native Americans as "traditional tobacco", either by itself or in a mixture with other plant materials. Among the Algonquian peoples

Algonquian peoples

The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds. Today hundreds of thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples...

 such as the Ojibwe, the smoking mixtures, known as kinnikinnick

Kinnikinnick

Kinnikinnick is a Native American smoking product, typically made of mixture of various leaves or barks with other plant materials.-Etymology:...

, blended the inner bark with tobacco

Tobacco

Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...

, while more western tribes added it to the bearberry

Bearberry

Bearberries are three species of dwarf shrubs in the genus Arctostaphylos. Unlike the other species of Arctostaphylos , they are adapted to Arctic and sub-Arctic climates, and have a circumpolar distribution in northern North America, Asia and Europe, one with a small highly disjunctive population...

 leaf to improve the taste.

The Ojibwe used Red Osier Dogwood bark as a dye by taking the inner bark, mixing it with other plants or minerals.

Species

It is a variable species, with two subspecies

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

commonly accepted:

• Cornus sericea subsp. sericea - throughout the range of the species. Shoots and leaves hairless or finely pubescent; flower petals 2-3 mm.
• Cornus sericea subsp. occidentalis (Torr. & A.Gray) Fosberg - western North America. Shoots and leaves densely pubescent; flower petals 3-4.5 mm.

External links

• USDA ARS Germplasm Resources Information Network: Cornus sericea
• NRCS: USDA Plants Profile: Cornus sericea
• Profile: Red-osier Dogwood (Cornus sericea) Photos, Drawings, Text. (Wild Plants of Winnipeg from Nature Manitoba)
• Jepson Flora of California: Cornus sericea; subsp. sericea, subsp. occidentalis.
• Cornus sericea ssp. sericea images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu