Dogwood, Yellow Twig

Yellow Twig Dogwood, or Cornus sericea 'Flaviramea', is a shrub Dogwood with rich summer foliage and excellent fall color. If cut to the ground every spring, the one-year-old stems maintain an eye-catching yellow-green in the wintertime. The showy white panicles of the late-spring flowers turn into an even showier summer fruit. The flowers attract butterflies, and the berry drupe fruit attracts birds. Yellow Twig Dogwood has a stout constitution and will grow in very inhospitable conditions. The habit is loose and rounded with horizontal branches at the base of the trunk.

If unpruned, Yellow Twig Dogwood will grow 6'-8' high and wide. An alternative is to maintain it as a small shrub of about 4' by coppice pruning. Coppice pruning involves cutting a woody plant to ground level every one to two years. While this eliminates the flower and fruit attributes, the stems will provide a fantastic show in the drab winter landscape, as noted above. The new growth will also appear more rapidly in the spring, giving you a plant with four-season appeal.