Thursday, April 12, 2012

Dogwood blooms

Eastern dogwood in bloom
As anticipated, the dogwood is starting to bloom in the forest at Roundtop. The showy white blossoms, often tinged with a deep pink, are appearing all over the mountain. Dogwood is one of those blooming trees you have to see to believe. They are so beautiful that they don’t seem real.

Roundtop is a forest filled with oak, beech and hickory trees, the kind of forest that produces nuts—acorns, hickory nuts, etc. And then spring arrives and along the forest edges appears this wild proliferation of blooms. For a little while it simply doesn’t look like the same forest.

So far, the dogwood trees here on Roundtop appear to be healthy. A fungus has damaged or killed many trees elsewhere. I look at the leaves and the twigs here on the mountain for signs up of it, and so far I haven’t found any.  I hope I never do.

4 comments:

Jacqueline Donnelly said...

Lovely! What a combination they make with the Redbud trees. Will you have azaleas and laurels, too?

Carolyn H said...

Woodswalker: No, I don't have azaleas, laurels or rhododendron here on Roundtop. For that I travel to another nearby mountain. I'm not sure why they aren't here. Perhaps the soil is just different enough.

John "By Stargoose And Hanglands" said...

Beautiful. Around here I have to make do with hedges full of Blackthorn blossom - and orchards, of course.

Granny Sue said...

Great photos! Your dogwoods certainly look healthy. We don't have laurel here either. I wish we did.