I look forward every year to the dogwood trees blooming. If you walk through the woods at the right time, dozens, or scores of flowering dogwoods are visible into the distance. The neat thing is that they usually bloom before the trees leaf out, so the forest is open and you can see fairly long distances. Once the dogwood blooms fade and the trees leaf out, the forest closes in, and there is no way to tell that there are so many dogwoods out there. But things seemed different this year. I don’t completely trust my memory about things like this, but a letter to Walter Reeves, who does a gardening and plant column in the Atlanta newspaper, confirmed my impression. The letter writer asked why the dogwoods bloomed so sparsely. Reeves didn’t know the answer, but, as he noted, neither drought nor a late freeze could explain it.
Here is a dogwood in our yard from 2008.
Our dogwood in 2008
I was hoping for something like that this year, but this is what we got.
Our dogwood in 2013
It’s pretty enough, but there are fewer blooms, and note how much foliage there is, not only on the dogwood itself, but also on the oak next to it. These photos are five years apart, so the trees have grown since, but the bare trunks are visible behind the dogwood in the 2008 photo.
This is a view from the north face of Lavender Mountain, looking into Little Texas Valley.
View over Little Texas Valley
There are a few dogwoods in this photo, if you study it. In what I consider a normal year, they would stand out against a nearly leafless background.
It has been something of a disappointment, but apparently it’s natural, and not a sign of a significant problem. Maybe next year.
I understand that oaks go through cycles with acorn production since it takes so many resources to produce them. So one year the acorns are abundant and then for a few years they are less so. Perhaps that’s the case with the dogwoods. Just a rest period.
I don’t have any dogwoods in my forest. They are common enuf in the Ozarks, but not my part apparently. I understand they need some special fungus in the soil to thrive, and I guess I don’t have it. I’ve planted dogwood, but none have survived.
It’s funny you should mention acorn production, because the oaks on our property produced a tremendous crop this spring, way more than I’m used to seeing.
Makes me wonder if it has happened like this before, which would make it part of a normal cycle, or if this is a sign of some kind of stress. I think for people who are keen observers, you might have seen something like this before and if it were a regular event, seen it more than once in all these years. The fact that it stands out seems significant to me.