This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Functional'. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Analytics'. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. It’s these aspects of year-round appeal that helped qualify Cornus mas to become a 1999 Cary Award winner–a well-deserved honor. Few plants in my garden offer so much visual interest in every season. Even in winter the bark on mature stems and trunks exfoliates to create a colorful contrast against the snow. Hybridizers in Eastern Europe and Russia have developed some cultivars with exceptionally large fruit, and they’re only recently becoming available in the USA from specialty nurseries.įall foliage color is variable depending upon conditions, but most years, its leaves turn a rich wine-red before dropping in October. Its fruit, only fully ripening after it falls or is picked off the plant, tastes a lot like a melding of cranberry and sour cherry for centuries traditional European cultures have valued it for preserves and beverages. mas ‘Variegata’), followed in mid-summer by a profusion of edible berries. mas displays clean, dark green leaves (there’s now a yellow-variegated-leaf cultivar, C. Yes, its flowers don’t last long, usually only a week or two, but that’s enough to get my senses tuned to what’s soon to follow: the earliest magnolias, Forsythia, “real” cherry trees and the Early Rhododendrons like ‘Weston’s Pink Diamond’ and ‘PJM’.įinishing its bloom, C. One of the first of the woody plants to bloom in my garden, it signals the beginning of a cascade of color about to begin. tree) is its display of golden-yellow flowers which appear in earliest spring, just as the days begin to warm. No, despite its name, it’s not a cherry it’s really a dogwood, and the first of this diverse genus to flower every spring.įor me, the real appeal of this plant (which can be grown as a multi-stem shrub or trained to form a 15-20 ft. And few trees or shrubs are more appropriate than the cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) for ushering-out winter, enticing spring to begin. Every year those long-awaited first flowers of spring always arouse my senses and give birth to a primal appreciation of the renewal of life.

Cornus mas cornelian cherry charcoal