Cornus racemosa (Northern Swamp Dogwood or Gray Dogwood) is a shrubby plant native to southeastern Canada and the northeastern United States. It is a member of the dogwood genus Cornus and the family Cornaceae.
Plants can produce many stems and suckers, with older stems, which can reach 5 metres (16 ft) in height, having distinctive gray bark. The plant grows upright with a rounded habit and oppositely arranged leaves and terminally born flowers. The white flowers are small, with four petals, and clustered together in rounded, 2-inch-wide (51 mm) clusters called cymose panicles, produced in May and early June. After flowering, green fruits are produced that turn white in late summer. The white fruits, or drupes, are attached to the plant by bright red pedicels. Many species of birds feed on the fruits. Old branches grow slowly, while new stems are fast growing. In the fall the foliage can take on a reddish or purplish color, though it is not overly showy from a distance.
A synonymous name for the species is Swida racemosa.
Famous quotes containing the words northern and/or swamp:
“In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)