Cornus kousa chinensis “China Girl” is one of those shrubs that we look forward to with great anticipation every year. It gives its special performance almost every year but does occasionally have a year off. It is as far from the house as it can possibly be so we have to wander down to see what it is up to.
It is a shrub that keeps on performing with wonderful white bracts early each summer followed by raspberry-like fruits in early autumn and red leaves each autumn.
In this post I want to share the special show that the bracts give. The two pics above and the first batch of pics below shows our own shrub in our Japanese Garden.
When the bracts first appear they are pale green with deeper green bosses of flower in their centres. Slowly the green changes as it prepares to transform to cream, then to the purest of whites.
On a visit to Winterbourne House Botanical Gardens in Edgbaston Birmingham we came across two particularly beautiful specimens of Cornus kousa, a pink bract variety known as var. chinensis Miss Satomi and one of the best white bract-bearing varieties Norman Haddon.
greenbenchramblings 
2 replies on “Our Delightful Dogwood”
Hello Malcolm – glad you found our Dogwoods as well as the cacti and succulents. C. ‘Norman Haddon’ produces the best display of strawberry-like fruits in late summer. They hang down in their hundreds from the tree. Does C. ‘China Girl’ ever produce fruit?
Beautiful. I wish I had a spot for one. 🙂