| NOS CORNUS ELLIPTICA (angustata) PAGE click images below to enlarge |
Copyright
2003-2005. Laurence C. Hatch. All Rights Reserved. All downloading, printing, saving to media, or offline use is prohibited. Duplication by any means is unlawful. Do not link to this page. |
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 original tree of 'First Choice'. Raulston Arboretum. Summer 2003. Click image. If you read the cultivar descriptions below you may note they all pretty much have the same reason for being - vigorous, truly evergreen, floriferous, rootable, and more cold hardy. Trials of these are ongoing various places and we suspect that some regions will come to prefer one over another. Note the very long peduncles (flower stalks) in this photo. This is one way to tell the thing from C. capitata but also serves horticulturally to make the flowers "pop" from under the foliage. That is a species plus here. However, C. elliptica does not (as I write this May 2005) yet give us the bright orange and purple new growth of C. capitata. We hope someone can combine the best of each sometime and still preserve the dark, crisp winter green foliage. LCH. |
This remarkable
cousin of Cornus kousa (formerly called var. angustata) is
correctly a distinct species. The late Dr. Ted Dudley, taxonomist at the
US National Arboretum, wrote to this effect and felt the best, oldest,
valid name was Cornus angustata. Stlll nurserymen are going with it the
wrong old way. It is a flowering arborescent dogwood that is evergreen
to semi-evergreen depending on one's climate. As seen here at the
Raulston Arboretum, this magnificent species has thick, dark green
leaves that feel and look very substantial. They retain some of the
arcuate, textured venation of the deciduous species.
Since the work of Dudley and others, the Flora of China has been published for the Cornaceae with substantial, original revisions to the species concepts that demand our attention and respect. Specifically this work is cited as:
The formal and correct new name for this evergreen entity is now:
It is based on the name Cynoxylon ellipticum of Pojarkova published in 1950 (gender ending adjusted ), the oldest known good epithet at the species level. The epithet angustata AT THE SPECIFIC (SPECIES) LEVEL is more recent and thus excluded. It has been somewhat controversial in taxonomy to rename plants based on older names coined by Russian authors whose works were not until recently known in the West (among them Dr. Dudley and the entire western Cornus-loving community) and may not quality as worldwide publication by botanical standards. That point noted, we feel that the uniformly high quality of Drs. Xiang and Boufford work (together with rigorous Harvard review standards) to merit faith in their decisions and go with them. In general, I like to always use the names of country or region's authoritative flora unless some more recent paper present more compelling and fresh evidence to the contrary. Go with the Floras of China, North America, and Europe whenever you can. Compared to Cornus kousa var. chinensis, the bracts immediately differ from the Kousa in being much narrower, rarely overlapping, and quite acuminately pointed. In this example they are very small with a diameter of the entire inflorescence of only 2 inches or less. The central, globose cluster of true flowers stands out like it was glued on for decoration. It is a very appealing flower from any distance. |
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 Distance view of the same tree above. |
The species is less
cold hardy than C. kousa at USDA 7 and perhaps some of zone 6. Claims of
zone 5 reported in places seem doubtful as no evidence has been brought.
It gets some odd winter discoloration in some areas and wind damage.
'Prodigy' (see below) reportedly has no odd winter tints of red and
purple shades. A bit of protection and shade for young plants is a good
idea. Heat tolerance is reported as being good and perhaps this is the
equivalent of Cercis canadensis subsp. texensis (mexicana) for the
dogwood world.
You can see from this photo is less floriferous than your average modern, improved Kousa cultivar. That is not a bad thing I think. The balance of the dark, leathery leaf and the pale bracts should be maintained at around 50:50. That dark, textured background has a great foil for these refined little stars. It should be noted that Cornus elliptica is more similar to C. capitata than the C. kousa in any of it's deciduous phases. There are wild intermediates between C. elliptica and C. capitata but it is not yet known if they are hybrids or just little known links in what could become one larger species concept. DNA work will have to be done on the wild taxa before we can lock down either species to a degree we now find necessary. Using the characters in the key by Jenny Xiang and David Boufford we can construct this chart:
LCH |