Kiss the Earth

Looking out my kitchen window this morning, I saw nothing but rain and darkness. Gloomy Friday. Then, over in the corner of the garden, I noticed a dogwood tree in full bloom. Wow! The flowers almost look unreal, like something painted on rice paper.

They're about two inches across, an unusual coral color, and in the morning darkness, they lit up the yard. I grabbed my pruners and went out there in the rain and cut a few airy stems. They fill a foyer window just so. Imagine how they'll look when the sun shines again.

There are many kinds of dogwood, but the American eastern dogwood (Cornus florida), which is native to this area, is the state flower or tree in three states - Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia. (In case you're wondering, in Pennsylvania, the state tree is the eastern hemlock, the flower mountain laurel, and in New Jersey, the tree is Northern red oak and the flower is violet.)

There's a lot of folklore surrounding the dogwood, and who knows what's true. Diana Wells, in her interesting book 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1997), explains that a dogwood with exceptionally hard wood was used by the Greeks to make javelins and spearheads. In fact, she writes, the wood was as hard as an animal's horn. Cornus is Latin for horn ...

So where'd the dog part come from? That, Diana says, comes from the idea that the berries were considered unfit for human consumption and so, were fed to dogs. Or the idea that the leaves were used to bathe dogs. Or whatever. Take your pick.

She also suggests that the twigs, if chewed first, can be squished into a kind of primitive toothbrush. I was a hyperactive Girl Scout who made the most of everything in the woods and garden, but ouch!

Today I'll - happily - settle for blooms in the gloom.