The Autumn Flame

Habit: A bushy shrub, rarely a small tree, deciduous, 2 to 6 meters tall. The crown is irregular, broad and wide from the base, light green in summer, turning dark red in autumn. The trunk is erect, often sinuous, and heavily branched, irregularly from ground level. Bark: Smooth, shiny, and gray in young specimens, furrowed with characteristic reddish cracks, becoming decidedly wrinkled as it ages. Branches: Young branches are typically reddish, with two angles or edges, and covered with sparse pubescence. Leaves: Deciduous, small, arranged oppositely along the branches. The lamina varies from oval to elliptical with a pointed apex and an entire (smooth) margin; it displays 3-4 pairs of conspicuously arched longitudinal veins. The color is light green on the upper surface, while the lower surface is lighter, dull, and covered with hairs. In autumn, the leaves take on a spectacular and intense blood-red color. Flowers: They develop after the leaves appear. They are hermaphroditic, stalked, creamy-white in color, and grouped in showy, flat apical umbels 4-5 cm in diameter. They have a bicarpellary inferior ovary and a calyx with barely visible intergrown segments. The corolla is made up of four free, linear petals (5-6 mm long) and hairy on the lower portion. The stamens are four, as long as the corolla and slightly longer than the style. They emit an odor that is unpleasant to humans, but highly attractive to insects such as cockchafers. Fruit: Spherical, edible drupes, purplish-black in color when ripe (between September and October). The surface is ribbed and sometimes dotted with white; the flavor is bitter and unpleasant. Inside, the stone contains particularly oily seeds. Flowering: May - June.

Chorological type: Eurasian. Distribution in Italy: Very common plant, widespread throughout the country. Habitat: Grows from plains up to 1,300 meters above sea level. It grows between tree rows, in mixed broadleaf forests, along meadow edges, in shrubby patches, and along stream banks. It acts as a pioneer species, appearing among the first woody species in abandoned agricultural or pastoral lands, where it readily forms stable associations with other native plants on fertile, fresh soils.

Genus (Cornus): Derived from the Indo-European root kar (to be hard, rigid), which became the Latin cornus (horn), a term chosen to emphasize the extreme hardness, density, and strength of the wood.

Species (sanguinea): Latin epithet meaning "blood-colored," explicitly referring to the bright red color that characterizes the young branches and then the leaves during the autumn.

Dogwood is a medicinal plant. Dimethylglycine is extracted from the bark of its branches. It has antithrombotic and anticoagulant properties. It is used in gemmotherapy to treat hyperthyroidism associated with signs of thyrotoxicosis (tachycardia, tremors, anxiety, weight loss).

The wood, very hard and compact, is traditionally used for turning and making tool handles, pipes, and walking sticks. The young branches, extremely flexible, are used as binding materials for making baskets and brooms. In some local traditions, the stripped branches serve as toothpicks or skewers for cooking meat, imparting a pleasant aroma. An oil was once extracted from the seeds, used as fuel for lamps, in tanning hides (to dye them gray or blue), and in soap making.

The flexible branches were historically used (and sometimes still are in poaching) to make the hooks for "archetti," traps for catching small birds.

Due to the great aesthetic value of its autumnal plumage, the plant is widely used in forest nurseries as an ornamental and in naturalistic engineering projects for the consolidation of slopes.