Red osier dogwood
Cornus sericea
also called red twig dogwood, red osier, redosier dogwood
The native red-twig: a thicket of stems that turn signal-flare crimson against the snow, with white flower clusters for the pollinators in June and porcelain-white berries for the birds in fall.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green · Bronze, red and brown
- Flower color
- White
- Sunlight
- Full sun for the reddest stems
- Watering
- Moderate to high; a streambank shrub built for the rain garden
- Soil
- Moist to wet; any ordinary soil, the wetter the better
- Feeding
- Gentle all-organic
- USDA zones
- 2a–7b
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Plant out
- at the last spring frost
- Plant spacing
- 6 ft 7 in
- In-row spacing
- 4 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 8 ft 2 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 15–20 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
Stems root where they touch damp ground and it suckers besides, so a plant put in for winter stems becomes a thicket in a few years. That is exactly what you want on a stream bank.
The habit is Red osier dogwood’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- When
- Stems for winter vases in December; the renewal cut in earliest spring, before the leaves.
- What to look for
- Stem color at its most vivid after hard frost. For renewal, any stem gone dull, gray or thicker than a thumb has aged out.
- How to harvest
- Cut a third of the oldest stems to 5 cm from the ground each March: that single habit keeps the whole shrub in young red wood forever. December cuttings for the vase come from what would be cut anyway.
- How often
- Every spring without fail; the color is only ever on wood one to three years old.
- Storing the crop
- Cut stems hold their red for months outdoors in pots and arrangements. Any 20 cm piece stuck in damp soil in fall is a rooted new shrub by summer, so the pruning is also the propagation.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Only young wood colors, so the whole point is the pruning: take a third of the oldest stems to the ground every spring and the shrub is a permanent bonfire. Skip it three years and you have a plain green bush.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com