Kousa Dogwood – Fruit

Q: I would love to know the name of this tree. I took this picture at Stone Mountain Park near the Plantation parking lot.

A: It’s a kousa dogwood. The fruit you noticed has been particularly prominent this year.

I had never seen the fruit until I visited the fine dogwood collection at Biltmore Estate. One kousa dogwood there was loaded with the odd-looking edible pink fruit and I sampled several of them. “Lightly-sweetened vanilla custard” is my memory of the taste.

This dogwood blooms later than our native flowering dogwoods…keep an eye out for the large white flowers in May each year. I like kousa dogwood a lot, both for the flowers and fruit and because it resists several leaf spot diseases that affect flowering dogwood.