Cornus alternifoliaL.f.

alternate-leaved dogwood

WFO wfo-0000924582 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Cornus alternifolia, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. a Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205885179
Cornus alternifolia, photographed by Pierre Cartier
fig. b Pierre Cartier, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203195236
Cornus alternifolia, photographed by Bex Goreham
fig. c Bex Goreham, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203734870
Cornus alternifolia, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. d Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202571691
Cornus alternifolia, photographed by naturalist charlie
fig. e naturalist charlie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203720934
Cornus alternifolia, photographed by Ethan Rose
fig. f Ethan Rose, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201976963
Cornus alternifolia, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. g Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202453333
Cornus alternifolia, photographed by Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng.
fig. h Mary E. Macaulay, P.Eng., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202574878

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 1,310 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 1,310 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 19 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Bothrocaryum alternifolium (L.f.) Pojark.
  • Cornus alterna Marshall
  • Cornus alternifolia f. albomarginata Schelle
  • Cornus alternifolia f. albovariegata Schelle
  • Cornus alternifolia f. alternifolia
  • Cornus alternifolia f. argentea (Rehder) Rehder
  • Cornus alternifolia f. ochrocarpa Rehder
  • Cornus alternifolia var. argentea Rehder
  • Cornus alternifolia var. corallina Aiton
  • Cornus alternifolia var. ochroleuca Rehder
  • Cornus alternifolia var. variegata Waracek
  • Cornus alternifolia var. virescens Aiton
  • Cornus plicata Tausch
  • Cornus punctata Raf.
  • Cornus riparia Raf.
  • Cornus riparia var. rugosa Raf.
  • Cornus rotundifolia Raf.
  • Cornus undulata Raf.
  • Swida alternifolia (L.f.) Small

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.