Korean Dogwood Traditional Cache

Korean Dogwood blooms later than Flowering Dogwood. When Tundra Wolf asked for a Dogwood cache, I knew they were already over bloomed. Then I remembered the Korean Dogwoods in the Plantations. Far enough away from other caches? Unfortunately not so. But, I squeezed one in close by.

The fabulous Cornus Kousa, that the tag lists from Korea, Japan and China is blooming right now, just up the road a bit from the cache.

Cornus is a genus of about 30–60 species^{[Note 1]} of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods, which can generally be distinguished by their blossoms, berries, and distinctive bark.^[2] Most are deciduous trees or shrubs, but a few species are nearly herbaceous perennial subshrubs, and a few of the woody species are evergreen. Several species have small heads of inconspicuous flowers surrounded by an involucre of large, typically white petal-like bracts, while others have more open clusters of petal-bearing flowers. The various species of dogwood are native throughout much of temperate and boreal Eurasia and North America, with China and Japan and the southeastern United States particularly rich in native species.

Species include the common dogwood Cornus sanguinea of Eurasia, the widely cultivated flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) of eastern North America, the Pacific dogwood Cornus nuttallii of western North America, the Kousa dogwood Cornus kousa of eastern Asia, and two low-growing boreal species, the Canadian and Eurasian dwarf cornels (or bunchberries), Cornus canadensis and Cornus suecica respectively.

Common name "dogwood"

The name "dog-tree" entered the English vocabulary before 1548, becoming "dogwood" by 1614. Once the name dogwood was affixed to this kind of tree, it soon acquired a secondary name as the Hound's Tree, while the fruits came to be known as dogberries or houndberries (the latter a name also for the berries of black nightshade, alluding to Hecate's hounds). Another theory advances the view that "dogwood" was derived from the Old English dagwood, from the use of the slender stems of its very hard wood for making "dags" (daggers, skewers, and arrows).^[3][4] Another, earlier name of the dogwood in English is the whipple-tree. Geoffrey Chaucer uses "whippletree" in The Canterbury Tales ("The Knight's Tale", verse 2065) to refer to the dogwood. A whippletree is an element of the traction of a horse-drawn cart, linking the drawpole of the cart to the harnesses of the horses in file; these items still bear the name of the tree from which they are commonly carved.

Cornus florida (flowering dogwood) is a species of flowering plant in the family Cornaceae native to eastern North America and northern Mexico. An endemic population once spanned from southernmost coastal Maine south to northern Florida and west to the Mississippi River.

They typically flower in early April in the southern part of their range, to late April or early May in northern and high altitude areas. Notice the indentation at the end of each white bract of the Flowering Dogwood, where the Korean Dogwood is pointed. The similar Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa), native to Asia, flowers about a month later.

The cache is a camoed "micro" pill bottle. It's the kind that you have to push hard to turn, both to open and close. It has only a rolled log, held tight with a rubber band and a tiny zip lock plastic bag to keep it dry. Please put the rubber band on your finger while you log. That way you won't lose it. It will help you put the log back in the bag and help the next cacher get the bag out of the bottle. BYOP and please no tweezers, they kill the plastic.