Silky Dogwood represents a group of shrub dogwoods native to Ohio that have a strongly multi-stemmed growth habit and are always found in nature as a shrub rather than a tree. They are found throughout all of Ohio, and grow to 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide under optimum conditions as a single specimen. At this time of the year their berries are ripe.
This tree prefers moist to wet sites in soils of various composition and pH. It adapts to dry soils, poor soils, or soils that are wet in Winter and Spring, and dry in Summer and Autumn. Silky Dogwood is a host plant for the Spring Azure Butterfly. Its flower have also been found to support several specialist bee species.
The mid-Spring flowers of Silky Dogwood are flat-topped, and white but without the large, showy bracts that are characteristic of Flowering Dogwood. The blooms form in clusters, which are visited by a variety of bee and butterfly pollinators.
The blue-black fruits mature in mid-Summer and are quickly consumed by birds, squirrels, and other woodland mammals. More than 45 types of songbirds and game birds have been documented consuming Silky Dogwood’s berries. Indeed, at Beaver Marsh in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the berries seem to be disappearing quickly.
Silky Dogwood has simple, opposite leaves that turn a brownish-red color in the Fall. Because of its preference for wetter areas, Silky Dogwood is sometimes referred to as Swamp Dogwood.
As with most of the “shrub dogwoods” that occur in the fields, forest edges, stream borders, and fencerows of the eastern United States, the growth habit is usually an upright, dense shrub in youth, which becomes a spreading, sprawling, open and loose collection of mature branches and vigorous suckers with age.
