Just looking at a tree in the Valley Pet Memorial Gardens in the Valley of the Temples "brings happiness" to Elizabeth Borge of Punaluu, who passes it every day in her car. "This precious tree does a most unusual thing: it has tons of pretty green leaves for part of the year, then it sheds every single leaf and looks quite dismal. Dogwood tree graces
pet cemetery grounds
"Then large tufts of flowers appear on the end of the branches while it still has no leaves. It's incredibly magical. What's the name of this fascinating tree?"
The tree, which is far left in the pet cemetery when facing the valley, is a Pacific Dogwood, known around the botany lab as cornus nuttallii.
This info was provided by the groundspeople at the cemetery, but they didn't know much else. More info surfaced thanks to the Internet and the Star-Bulletin's resident green thumb, Lois Taylor. Apparently, it's kind of a miracle that a Pacific Dogwood can grow in Hawaii at all.
The tree is as sensitive as a Bishop Estate trustee. It reacts unfavorably to water, fertilizing, pruning and -- get this -- the bark is so sensitive it can be sunburned!
"Well, we never do water it, and we never fertilize it; it's just growing there without our help," said Ben Bugarin, maintenance director.
Pacific dogwoods can get up to 50 feet tall with a 20-foot spread. The leaves are 3 to 5 inches long, rich green above and gray-green below. (In temperate weather, they turn colors in fall.) In spring, the leaves do drop off, but what replaces them aren't flowers -- they're "bracts," which are kind of like leaves dressed in drag.
"I don't understand it either," explained Taylor. "They look like flowers and act like flowers, but they're not flowers. The 'flowers' are the itty-weenie things in the middle of the bract."
The Pacific Dogwood's bracts are white or tinged with pink.
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin