08/21/2026
Nursery staff is in the thick of seed collecting as all the fruits are ripening in fast succession.
Right now, our main targets are the dogwoods. Dogwoods are an excellent habitat plant, supporting many kinds of pollinators and their larvae. They also supply birds, bears and deer with their high fat fruits (drupes) with a late season meal. And, of course, the sticks, branches and leaves provide all kinds of critters with shelter and nesting habitat. If you are looking to add some shrubs to a planting near you, cornus is a good bet! With that said, let's highlight one of our lesser known native dogwood species.
This is Cornus amomum, or the silky dogwood. It can be easily confused with its showier and better known relative, the red-twig dogwood (Cornus sericea). These two can be hard to distinguish from one another at first glance, but red-twig, as the name suggests, has a brighter red bark, while silky is more maroon with grey speckles.
They occupy similar wet habitats, and their ranges overlap here in MN, but silky has the more southern range of the two. Silky can also take slightly more shade but still prefers full sun.
Though they can look very similar and share the same habitats, right now is the best time of the year to tell them apart. The berries of red-twig are a bright white, while the berries of the silky range from a beautiful sky blue to deep navy blue. The blues make the silky dogwood a particularly beautiful shrub in late summer and a great addition to any native planting.
