second pic

Oh! I should know that one...

Thanks Floral!

More species of dogwood have flowers like this than ones with petal-like bracts.

We have tons of Dogwood here in TX, and that doesn't look like the one's we have here?

Looks like Wedding Cake Tree Popular in UK, not so much in mid Atlantic US, maybe it doesn't like our hot, burning summer sun.

Not just looks like ....

Sam there is a 24 foot tall C. controversa at NCSU arboretum, and a 20 footer at Swarthmore, so they hardly seem ungrowable on the east coast.

Sorta OT, but when I was a teen I tried an 'Eddie's White Wonder' from Forestfarm. It quickly perished. This a Pacific Dogwood X Eastern Dogwood hybrid. Garden press at the time described it as 'difficult to grow' on the east coast. Much more recently I bought one from Whitman Farms, and it is growing like gangbusters. The difference? The plant in the early 1990s was almost certainly grafted onto Pacific dogwood seedlings. The recent one is grafted onto Cornus kousa!

Kind of like how the superb 'Nancy Evans' yellow rhododendron is growing very well around here when grafted onto the very heat tolerant hyperythrum hybrid 'Charles Loomis'. But languishes and dies off in a year or two when grown on its own roots. The largest rhododendron wholesaler in the world, Hachmann in Germany, grafts ALL of their rhododendrons. Yet I have contacted every major nursery selling rhododendrons in the US, and cannot get a one of them to sell grafted plants.* Kind of makes you wonder...

* The late, great Kathy Van Veen would do it on request, and thank goodness I got her to graft a few.