Pacific Dogwood essays

Pacific Dogwood essays The pacififc dogwood is also known as the Western Flowering Dogwood or the Mountain Dogwood. The name "dogwood" is thought to be related to the early use of hardwood trees because the wood was considered skewers of "dags" and over time "dagwood" became "dogwood". Structure of the tree, leaf, stem, flower, fruit, and bark~ The Pacific Dogwood can get up to about 15 meters in height or it can appear as small as a shrub. It grows where many hardwood trees cannot because it is successful in carrying out photosynthesis under only 1/3 of full sunlight making it shade tolerant. The wood is fine grained, hard and heavy. It is also prone to splitting, so it has limited and specialized uses. The leaves are about 6-11 cm wide and 3-7 cm long. They are simple and deciduous. Their shape is elliptical to obvoate or almost round and the edges are slightly wavy with 5-6 mm long veins on each side of the midveins. The color is usually shiny green and nearly hairless above with paler woolly hairs beneath. In Autumn, their pigmentation turns red and orange. The stems are slender with a light green color that becomes dark red or blackish with age. Each one is bent to prevent overlap with other flowers. The flowers are about 6 mm wide and have 4 greenish-yellow petals. Each cluster of about 20 flowers is bordered by 4-7 bracts (4-6 cm long). They are very large, elliptical, white (or pinkish) and petal-like. These bracts protect the flower clusters and attract pollinators. They do this by not falling off until every flower in their cluster is pollinated, thus they bloom for quite some time. The bracts have a notch at the top as a result of one seen on the pruplish bud before it forms. In Autumn, purplish-brown bracts form over next springs flower buds that will bloom from April to June and sometimes again in September. The fruit is a dense cluster of elongated red to scarlet drupes about  ½ an inch long. Each fruit contai...