Other Definitions
cornus (dict)
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CornusSee text. The genus Cornus is also known as the dogwoods, with about 30-50 species depending on taxonomic interpretation. Most species have opposite leaves, but alternate in a few. The fruit of all species is a drupe with one or two seeds. Flowers have four parts. Cornus has been divided into various subgenera, with numbers ranging from four to nine or more. Four subgenera are enumerated here: - With semi-showy flower clusters, usually white or whitish, in cymes, fruit red, blue or white:
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- Subgenus Cornus: flower clusters with a deciduous involucre
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- Subgenus Swida: flower clusters without an involucre
- With inconspicuous flower clusters, usually greenish, surrounded by showy petal-like bracts, fruit usually red:
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- Subgenus Chamaepericlymenum: subshrubs growing from woody stolons
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- Subgenus Benthamidia (Cynoxylon): shrubs and trees, including the flowering dogwood, Cornus florida
Many species in the Swida group are stoloniferous shrubs, growing along waterways. Several of these are used for naturalizing landscape plantings, especially the species with bright red or bright yellow stems. Most of the species in the Benthamidia group are small trees used as ornamentals. Eastern North American species of Cornus: - Subgenus Swida
- Subgenus Chamaepericlymenum
- Cornus canadensis -- Dwarf Cornel or Bunchberry; throughout Canada, into eastern Asia, and extreme northeast U.S.
- Cornus suecica -- Swedish Cornel; eastern Canada
- Subgenus Benthamidia (Cynoxylon)
- Cornus florida -- Flowering Dogwood; U.S. east of the Great Plains into southern Ontario
For a treatment of Asian dogwoods, see: http://hua.huh.harvard.edu/china/mss/volume14/Cornaceae-AGH_coauthoring.htm
Species list - Subgenus Cornus
- Subgenus Swida
- Subgenus Chamaepericlymenum
- Cornus canadensis - Dwarf Cornel or Bunchberry
- Cornus glabrata
- Cornus sessilis
- Cornus suecica - Swedish Cornel
- Cornus unalaschkensis
- Subgenus Benthamidia (Cynoxylon)
Cornus is also the name of a commune in the Aveyron dpartement, in France
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