Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service has fact sheets that give detailed and fascinating information about native plants. An extremely comprehensive resource, it begins with a thorough description of the entire plant. Most interesting to me is the history of its uses by native people and others for medicinal and utilitarian purposes.
One example is that dogwood leaves decompose quickly and therefore enrich the soil – another reason to leave them in place and not rake them up and send them to the landfill. Also interesting is information on how the species in question responds to fire. Dogwoods, a native to our region that had fire as natural part of the ecology, resprout reliably after surface but not crown fires, surface fires being the ones that were part of the natural longleaf community that once covered much of our state.
