Cloned and flowering dogwoods campaign

Greetings! This year's cloned dogwood ( Cornus florida 'Appalachian Spring') and native flowering dogwood ( Cornus florida ) campaign has come to a close. Thank you for your contributions to this important effort! Your observations added another year to the cloned plant dataset that began in the 1950s. This dataset has been used in a variety of research to determine the extent to which spring is advancing , changes in spring can affect migratory birds and other wildlife , and future weather extremes could threaten public lands . We hope you will join us again next year to continue to build on this long-term effort!

What you are reporting so far this year

This year, you reported on dogwoods at 148 sites , up from 126 sites last year. Is your site on the map below?

Sites reporting on flowering (represented by blue) and cloned (Appalachian Spring, represented by orange) dogwoods in 2019. Darker colors represent sites with more observations for that species.

Our Local Phenology Programs submitting the most data this year were New York Botanical Garden Forest Phenology, Mohonk Preserve, ProjectEXPLORE, UNC Asheville, and WVU Core Arboretum ! Thank you for your efforts! We also had 86 backyard observers submit observations this year - well done!

This year, you started reporting flowers or flower buds slightly later than last year for both native flowering dogwoods and cloned (Appalachian Spring) dogwoods.

If we take a closer look at your reports for flowers or flower buds, we can see that the proportion of individual native flowering dogwoods with "yes" records was slightly earlier this year than last year, with the peak in flowers occurring about a week earlier. This could be due to higher early-season temperatures this year than last year across much of the dogwood's range.

For cloned dogwoods, you started reporting flowers or flower buds over one month later this year than last year. You also have not reported fall flowers or flower buds as you reported last year. These late buds last year might have been due to observers reporting on dormant winter buds. Remember that you should not report "yes" to flowers or flower buds until the buds start to swell in the springtime in advance of opening.

For flowering and cloned dogwoods, your observations of dogwood flowering tended to be earlier in the south and near the coast than in the Midwest and Northeast.

This year, you started reporting breaking leaf buds at about the same time as last year.

If we take a closer look at the proportion of native flowering dogwoods for which you reported a "yes" for breaking leaf buds, we see that the peak in breaking leaf buds was slightly earlier this year than last year, with a higher proportion of individual plants with breaking leaf buds.

This pattern is similar for cloned dogwoods, which also had a slightly earlier start and peak in dogwoods with breaking leaf buds.

Your observations of breaking leaf buds tended to be earlier in the south and later in northern states.

We hope that you will join us again next year to keep learning about your dogwoods and adding to this rich dataset. Your reports will help us continue to understand how local environmental conditions influence the timing of flowering and leafing in dogwoods and to develop models to predict these seasonal events in the future. Thank you for your contributions to this important project!

Contact Erin Posthumus erin@usanpn.org 520-621-1670 bio

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