Flowers - (Apparently) large, white or pinkish, the four conspicuous parts simulating petals, notched at the top, being really bracts of an involucre below the true flowers, clustered, in the center, which are very small, greenish yellow, 4-parted, perfect. Stem: A large shrub or small tree, wood hard, bark rough. Leaves: Opposite, oval, entire-edged, petioled, paler underneath. Fruit: Clusters of egg-shaped scarlet berries, tipped with the persistent calyx. Preferred Habitat - Woodlands rocky thickets, wooded roadsides. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - Maine to Florida, west to Ontario and Texas. Has Nature's garden a more decorative ornament than the flowering dogwood, whose spreading flattened branches whiten the woodland borders in May as if an untimely snowstorm had come down upon them, and in autumn paint the landscape with glorious crimson, scarlet, and gold, dulled by comparison only with the clusters of vivid red berries among the foliage? Little wonder that nurserymen sell enormous numbers of these small trees to be planted on lawns. The horrors of pompous monuments, urns, busts, shafts, angels, lambs, and long-drawn-out eulogies in stone in many a cemetery are mercifully concealed in part by these boughs, laden with blossoms of heavenly purity. "Let dead names be eternized in dead stone, But living names by living shafts be known. Plant thou a tree whose leaves shall sing Thy deeds and thee each fresh, recurrent spring." Fit symbol of immortality! Even before the dogwood's leaves fall in autumn, the round buds for next year's bloom appear on the twigs, to remain in consoling evidence all winter with the scarlet fruit. When the buds begin to swell in spring, the four reddish-purple, scale-like bracts expand, revealing a dozen or more tiny green flowers clustered within for the large, white, petal-like parts, with notched, tinted, and puckered lips, into which these reddish bracts speedily develop, and which some of us have mistaken for a corolla, are not petals at all - not the true flowers - merely appendages around the real ones, placed there, like showy advertisements, to attract customers. Nectar, secreted in a disk on each minute ovary, is eagerly sought by little Andrena and other bees, besides flies and butterflies. Insects crawling about these clusters, whose florets are all of one kind, get their heads and undersides dusted with pollen, which they transfer as they suck. Hungry winter birds, which bolt the red fruit only when they can get no choicer fare, distribute the smooth, indigestible stones far and wide. When the Massachusetts farmers think they hear the first brown thrasher in April advising them to plant their Indian corn, reassuringly calling, "Drop it, drop it - cover it up, cover it up - pull it up, pull it up, pull it up" (Thoreau), they look to the dogwood flowers to confirm the thrasher's advice before taking it.