Playing with the Dogwood and the Red Bud Trees

The Alberetum Garden is vast. Lilac Walk is only a small portion of it. While we are busy with the lilacs… our eyes were caught by far away trees that seemed to have an all white leaves side by side with trees having pink leaves. Hmm…true enough, our curiosity guided our feet to that direction.

The white and pink leaves turned out to be not leaves at all but flowers. Small flowers that proliferate all the braches in clusters and there are no leaves at all. This tree has devoted its time to flowers and it was really pretty.

This is a Redbud Tree. It is a large shrub or small tree native to eastern North America from southern Ontario, Canada south to northern Florida, United States. The flowers are showy, light to dark magenta pink in color, 1.5 cm (½ inch) long, appearing in clusters from March to May, on bare stems before the leaves, sometimes on the trunk itself.

Dogwood Tree has bigger flowers than the redbud tree but like the latter, the dogweed tree flowers greatly outnumber it’s leaves.


To be able to see these trees/shrubs producing so much flowers to the point of sacrificing their ability to generate food is completely new to me. Well, for me who came from the tropics where leaves are a constant part of plants all year around, it is quite a shock. My future garden will definitely have these trees.