Photo: Henryhartley at English Wikipedia — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Survives zone 5 through 8
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Not the tart cornelian cherry (that's C. mas and C. officinalis, a different genus member entirely) — kousa dogwood's compound, raspberry-like fruit is sweet and genuinely tropical-tasting, often compared to persimmon, mango or pumpkin. Best eaten fresh: pull off the stem and suck the flesh out through the hole it leaves, since the skin is edible but gritty and bitter.
- Hardiness
- Zone 5–8
- Habit
- Tree
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Late Aug–Sept
- Mature size
- Shrub/small tree 4–7 m; containerable when young
- Light
- Full sun to partial; afternoon shade in heat
- Soil pH
- 5.5–7.5
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- East Asia — Japan, Korea and China.
- Status
- Both wild and cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 3–4 yrs grafted
- Growth speed
- Slow to moderate
- Spacing
- 500 cm (197 in) apart — about 25 m² (269 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Opposite, elliptic to ovate, 5–10 cm, entire margins, medium to dark green, turning red-purple in fall.
- Root system
- Shallow, fibrous and wide-spreading, mostly in the top 30–40 cm — it wants mulch and consistent moisture and burns in a hot dry summer. Notably less prone to dogwood anthracnose than the American C. florida, which is much of why it is planted.
- Fruit description
- A compound, raspberry-like fruit 2–3 cm across, formed from many small flowers fused into one ball, ripening pink to red; sweet, soft pulp around several hard seeds, under a gritty, bitter-tasting skin.
- Propagation
- Semi-hardwood cuttings in summer, hardwood cuttings in winter, or seed.
- Pollination
- Partially self-fertile — plant 2 for a real crop
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Growing tips. More drought-tolerant, cold-hardy and disease-resistant than the native American flowering dogwood (C. florida), including much lower susceptibility to dogwood anthracnose. Shallow-rooted — a mulch layer keeps the root zone cool and moist. Showy white flower bracts in late spring/early summer, after C. florida has finished.
Grow journal
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