Dogwood's pea-sizes black berries are attractive to the eye but not
to the palate. "We for the most part call it the Dogge berry tree,
because the berries are not fit to be eaten, or given to a dogge", so said John
Parkinson in Theatricum Botanicum (1640). Others have produced more
flattering etymologies for the shrub's common name, one suggestion being that
it comes from a decoction of the leaves having been used for washing mangy
dogs. It has also been claimed that a shrub of this genus (perhaps the American
T. sericea) was once used to treat hydrophobia caused by the bites of
rabid dogs. But perhaps the most likely derivation of the name is that it is a
corruption of "dagwood" - "dag" (as in "dagger") being an old
word for the butchers' skewers for which the shrub's very hard wood was once
much valued. Other uses included arrows, ram-rods, mill-cogs, pestles, and
wedges with which to rive softer woods (and, in parts of the West Country,
small crosses which were carried to ward off witchcraft!). Charcoal made from
dogwood was used in the manufacture of gunpowder. Given the arrows, ram-rods
and gunpowder, not to metion the autumn leaves and winter twigs, the specific
epithet "sanguinea" (= "blood red") seems most appropriate!If you want to be certain that a particular bush really is dogwood, take the base and apex of a leaf between your fingers and thumbs and gently pull the leaf apart. The leaf blade will fracture very neatly across the middle, if you then release one half, it won't fall to the ground but will hang suspended on the very fine vascular strands which will have stretched, but not broken, as the leaf lamina fractured. To the casual observer the leaf-half appears to be hanging, as if by magic, in mid air. I can never pass a dogwood bush without amusing myself with this little conjuring trick - but then, "little things please little minds!"
February 1999