dogwood

Enjoy some suggestions for flowering trees that could substitute for Callery Pear.

The kousa dogwood (Cornus florida) is an eye catcher. This 15 - 30 foot tall tree flowers a little later in the season compared to the native flowering dogwood (Cornus florida). The flowers, including the bracts which some people call erroneously call petals, appear above the tree's foliage. I have observed the bracts holding on for weeks. The fruit will develop as the season progresses and I have observed the squirrels having a feast as they ripen. 

  Yesterday, I visited Lee Beers, the OSU Extension Agriculture and Natural Resource educator in Trumbull County, and as plant lovers (Lee is finishing his PhD on lowbush blueberry physiology and genetics), we had to take a walk. Adjacent to the OSU, Trumbull County office is county land and the Mosquito Lake State Park. So, in this 48-hour flash quiz, a prize awaits for the person with the most correct answers in that time to the plant and pest photo questions from our walk. If ties; the very first top score shall prevail.  

 

  Let us begin with pictures of fruits,...

  Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head…Well, no, that is truly Fake News. Yet, upon returning from China to Springtime busting out all over in Ohio, I was mesmerized by the buzzing bees and budding birches; the blending of sweet birch catkins and flowering dogwood bracts above. Welcome to the Show! And right here in the Wayne County ChatScape.

 

  Up first, with a nod to China, is a golden-leaved ‘Ogon’ cultivar of dawnredwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides.

 

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Autumn light is different from summer light: more golden, as light rays lengthen, with longer shadows.  While there is time, and while the blue skies we have enjoyed all growing season fade to gray as winter beckons, go forth and catch some slanted sun-rays of autumn.  Enjoy the full life of fall.  

  The past few days have brought out the colors of flowering dogwood (Cornus florida), often neglected when the best fall foliage plants are listed. As the lead picture shows it is wonderful now, and its fat flower buds promise springtime reprisals.

  Next, enjoy the...

Like many powdery mildew diseases, high relative humidity but not high rainfall is a key to dogwood powdery mildew, caused by the fungus Erysiphe pulchra. There is a good bit of this disease this year in northeast Ohio, which is quite dry, and yesterday I took a look at some flowering dogwoods (Cornus florida) growing in pots in trials. There was a good bit of fungal mycelial growth and spores en masse evident on the foliage (what is called the “sign” of the pathogen), which is something everyone is familiar with for many powdery mildew diseases. Good examples are lilac...

This digital image of dogwood arrived with the e-mailer asking if the problem was leaf scorch.   Damage seemed too great and too complete to be simple leaf scorch due to some transient heat stress. Further information indicated that someone had suggested that the plant needed potash and the e-mailer applied it and then asked if too much could be applied.  Well, yes. As with anything, even something as useful as fertilizer, “the dose makes the poison.”

 

The sender had applied 2 pounds of a 6 pound bag of a consumer-product potash (0-0-60) fertilizer. So at 2 pounds...