Cornus mas, or the cornelian cherry is a small tree that grows to 6 metres in height. While the berries are red in colour with a flavour said to be similar to sour cherry; this tree is actually a dogwood. Another common name is edible dogwood, because the berries are often used in jams - due to their acidic flavour.Like another yellow winter flowering plant, the forsythia, the cornelian cherry flowers before the leaves shoot. The flowers grow in bunches along the branch providing a mass of colour - quite impressive considering that each individual flower is very small.
The photograph below shows the bracts that protect the flowers. The bracts fully open and remain behind the flowers.
The flowers themselves have four yellow petals and four anthers surrounding a single carpel. A single carpel makes sense as each flower, once fertilised, will develop into a single berry. As you can see in the photograph below, even when the bract has opened (which can be seen at the back of the photograph), the flowers open at their own speed. I wonder if this may be an attempt to reduce the chance of self fertilisation, or to increase the overall flowering period giving the tree as a whole the best chance for fertilising as many flowers as possible if some open during poor environmental conditions - or both - or something else entirely!
References
Cornus mas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2016. Cornus mas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornus_mas. [Accessed 05 March 2016].
It would make sense for flowers to open at slightly different times--or maybe not ;-) Fun to think about and speculate in any case. Nice to see the details in the close-up.
ReplyDeleteIt would be amazing if plants could answer all the questions I have for them. Until then, I can just speculate in an attempt to understand. :)
DeleteI wish I'd been doing focus stacking when I took the photos, so that last one could have been in total focus.
Interesting. I don't know much about this tree, although it's somewhat familiar to me. The flowers remind me of Milkweed (Asclepias) flowers or some of the Euphorbias. They're beautiful in their simplicity.
ReplyDeleteI had to look up Milkweed as I've not seen one before and can see why you feel it's familiar. :)
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