For Kids
Dogwood has many valuable qualities. It has always been considered an effective treatment for many ailments. Thus, the researcher of the Crimea V. Kh. Kondaraki wrote: “The natives consider the dogwood fruit extremely useful in all kinds of diseases, if used in the form of a decoction. They say that the famous healers of ancient times, when visiting Tavrida, did not stop here just because they saw a lot of dogwood, as the best doctor.” For medicinal purposes, dogwood is used for fruits, leaves, shoots, bark, roots. According to research, the fruits have anti – scurvy, antidiabetic, antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, bactericidal, antimalarial, bile and diuretic, tonic effects. They treat gastrointestinal diseases, dysentery, typhoid, and anemia. They help with measles, flu, scarlet fever, rickets, sore throat, diarrhea, tuberculosis, cirrhosis of the liver and other diseases. For example, dogwood pita bread during the Caucasian War saved the entire Russian army from scurvy. Any hemorrhoids with many years of experience are cured with dogwood stones in a week, and so on.
Delicious sweet and sour fruits with a peculiar aroma are eaten raw, as well as for making jam, jelly, marmalade, jam, extracts, syrups, fillings, kvass, compotes, wines. Dogwood fruits contain more vitamin C than black currants.
In Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, a delicacy – lavash-has long been prepared from mature dogwood fruits. The fruits for making pita bread are freed from the seeds, the pulp is boiled until a thick homogeneous mass is obtained, which is then thinly rolled out on clean planed boards and dried in the open air away from dusty places. Lavash is a concentrate containing all the nutrients that make up the fruit. In a dry room, it persists for a long time. Dogwood fruits with and without seeds have been dried since time immemorial, and this product, which resembles dried apricots in appearance, is called okht-zogal in Transcaucasia. You can store dried dogwood fruits in a dry form for decades. They are an indispensable seasoning for meat and fish dishes.
Products made of dogwood wood look like bone carving, and they are not inferior to it in strength. They are so similar to bone that they can mislead even jewelers. Abroad the wood of the dogwood are used in the decoration of villas, palaces and luxury yachts. In addition, it is not only a beautiful and very early honeybee, but also good at gardening. The famous Versailles Park near Paris is decorated with dogwood trees. The demand for dogwood is now the highest in the world.
This southern plant goes very far to the north from the places of its natural growth. That is, its individual forms as a result of multiple replanting have acquired relatively high frost resistance and winter hardiness. Such forms of it grow well and bear fruit on the territory of all Ukraine, Belarus and even the Baltic States. On the territory of Russia, they behave like this up to the latitude of the Eagle. At the latitude of Moscow and St. Petersburg, they freeze and even freeze to the level of snow and do not bear fruit only after particularly harsh winters and particularly short and cold growing seasons. In Siberia, in Barnaul, when grown in a stlantsevoy form, with timely bending to the ground and covering with snow, they do not freeze and bear fruit well. And I decided in my garden in Sverdlovsk, the dogwood grow also in stanaway form. Before I tell you about the experience of growing dogwood, I will tell you about the main features of this plant.
Common dogwood, flowering
In places of its natural growth, dogwood grows in mountain forests, on the edges and in thickets of other shrubs, rising to a height of 1500 m. It grows as a multi-stemmed shrub up to 4-6 m high or a tree with a spreading crown up to 8 m high. In the first years of life, it is characterized by slow growth. Its life span in natural conditions and in culture can be more than 100 years. For example, in Ukraine, near the caves of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, dogwood bushes, which are more than 300 years old, grow and still bear abundant fruit. The crown is usually spreading, sometimes pyramidal or spherical. However, more often dogwood grows as a bush, when all the shoots depart from the base. Annual shoots are green on all sides, pubescent with short whitish hairs. The growth shoot ends with a rather large, pointed at the end of the vegetative bud, on the sides of which two small vegetative buds are located opposite at the base, giving further short shoots. The leaves are simple, whole, green, shiny above and lighter below, with pressed scattered hairs. The flowers are yellow, small, collected in umbellate inflorescences. The fruit of the dogwood is a drupe, the pericarp is juicy, sour, sweet-sour and rarely sweet, pleasant, slightly astringent taste, differing in size, shape, weight, color.
Dogwood is a plant that grows in early flowering plants. Among the fruit trees, it blooms one of the very first, when the average daily temperature reaches +6…+11°C, in places of natural growth and distribution – in late March – early April, in our country-in mid-late April, sometimes in early May, before the leaves bloom. Dogwood is characterized by a different degree of development of flowers in the inflorescence, so the flowering is stretched almost almost for a month. With the sudden onset of cold weather, the flowers shrink and so hold on until the onset of constant heat, when the flowering of plants is already non-stop for 12-15 days. In this regard, during the spring frosts, a significant part of the flowers is preserved without damage.
Dogwood bears fruit annually and abundantly. From adult dogwood trees, up to fifty buckets of fruit are often collected. The period from the end of flowering to the beginning of fruit ripening lasts about 110-120 days, which falls mainly in mid-late September. The total duration of the growing season in dogwood is 192-196 days, and in years with very cold and short growing seasons, it does not have time to ripen before the cold shoots. Dogwood is a fairly frost-resistant plant, when the shoots mature, it tolerates temperature drops to -30…-32°C. Some forms can withstand frosts up to -35°C and slightly lower. However, winter thaws and the early onset of spring with the return of cold weather have a negative effect on it, which is associated with the inability to restore the winter hardiness of the plant to its previous high value after thaws. This affects both the growth and fruiting of dogwood. Rain and fogs during flowering also have a very unfavorable effect on fruiting.
Common dogwood in Moscow
Dogwood forms a powerful root system, lying at a depth of 20-120 cm from the soil surface. The vertical root is weakly expressed, deepens into the soil by 80-100 cm, the horizontal roots are long. They are well branched and form a thick lobe. The main part of the skeletal roots is located at a depth of 10-60 cm. Dogwood grows on any soil, but bears abundant fruit on calcareous, with a sufficient content of manganese. The powerful root system of dogwood, concentrated in the upper horizon of the soil, promotes the use of even minor precipitation, so it belongs to quite drought-resistant plants. But, nevertheless, it still prefers moderately moist soils and lacks moisture, especially with a large crop. With a long dry period, in such cases, its leaves curl, sometimes fruits dry out, and fruit buds may not be laid. A dense network of roots near the surface of the soil strengthens the slopes and, in addition, hinders the growth of herbaceous plants, which makes it easier to care for dogwood plants. When grown in open areas, its shoots ripen better, and it is more successful at the same time overwintering, although it tolerates some shading well. It belongs to the cross-pollinated plants, with self-pollination of the fruit does not tie. Therefore, when growing dogwood in culture, it is necessary to plant at least two different plants. The experience of dogwood culture in places favorable for its growth shows that it is not damaged by diseases and pests, does not need chemical protection, and can grow with minimal care.
The homeland of the wild dogwood is the Front Asia. Especially many of its varieties and forms grow in the Caucasus, in the Crimea, in Transcarpathia, in Central and Southern Europe. Within the former Soviet Union, especially many cultural forms were grown in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and southern Ukraine. At the time of the beginning of my passion for the dogwood culture (70-80 years of the last century), there were no official varieties of dogwood, there were only elite forms. To date, breeders have already offered a variety of varieties of different colors and tastes, differing from each other in shape, size and maturity. Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor S. V. Klimenko, Senior researcher at the National Botanical Garden named after N. N. Grishko of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, has achieved special success in dogwood breeding. It registered 14 varieties of dogwood-winter-hardy for the conditions of Ukraine, large-fruited, with good taste and different maturation periods, elite, selected, hybrid forms of dogwood.