Silky dogwood shows its colors

Each month, UT Gardens at the University of Tennessee suggests a Plant of the Month to garden writers and gardeners in the state. The January, 2020 featured plant is Silky Dogwood (Cornus amonum), a deciduous shrub native to the eastern U.S. that has small white flowers in late spring and clusters of blue berries in late summer and fall.

The silky dogwood that’s featured this month, though – a variety called ‘Cayenne’ — shows its best feature in winter, when the stems can stand out in bright, beautiful red against an otherwise brown landscape, or (if we’re lucky) with a background of fresh snow.

“Red twig dogwoods are hard to beat for their dramatic colorful show of stems in the winter,” says Jason Reeves, a research horticulturist at UT Gardens in Jackson, TN. Common cultivars include ‘Baileyi,’ ‘Cardinal,’ ‘Isanti,’ ‘Winter Flame’ and others.