Wedding cake tree

Cornus controversa

This giant dogwood, known as the wedding cake tree, sits proudly on the corner of Evarts and Butler Streets across from north wing of Island Cemetery.  This western North American native is a rare tree, especially with this individual’s size, for our area here on the east coast.  Known as the wedding cake tree it gets its name from the layered scaffold of branches that, when in bloom, look like the tapered layers of a wedding cake.  New varieties with variegated foliage are starting to make this species more popular here in the east.  Even though a western species it has a local relative, our native under-story pagoda dogwood, Cornus alternifolia.  Both species, unique to the dogwood genera, have alternate sympodial branching that make their identification easy amongst the normally opposite dogwoods.  This sympodial branching leads to the daisy chain appearance that gives the trees their layered cake-like scaffold.