Photo: Alex Abair, CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Toughleaf Dogwood

Cornus asperifolia

Also called southern roughleaf dogwood, eastern roughleaf dogwood, rough-leaf cornel, Swida asperifolia, Cornus microcarpa.

A thicket dogwood of the southern Coastal Plain for limy soils, with rough, hairy leaves, white spring flowers and pale blue berries.

Wildlife valueHedge or screenShowy flowersTolerates wet soil

Type: Shrub
Mature height: 6–13 ft
USDA zones: 7–9
Growth rate: Fast
Sun: Part
Soil moisture: Average, Wet
Grows wild in: The forest understory, rocky ground, swamps and wet flats
Native range: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Toughleaf dogwood is a thicket-forming shrub of the southeastern Coastal Plain, from North Carolina to central Florida and west to Mississippi. It grows in hammocks, on limestone and marl outcrops and at the edges of swamps, on limy or near-neutral soil rather than acid soil. Its leaves are rough with hairs above and carry curly white hairs beneath. Older books and some nursery catalogs use its botanical name for our roughleaf dogwood, a separate species of the Midwest. North Carolina lists it as endangered. Mass it as a screen or buffer at the edge of a woodland.

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator treats it as a fast grower, like our roughleaf dogwood, nearly three feet a year. It makes a thicket shrub 6 to 13 feet tall and can flower once it is about 5 feet tall. Its gray bark splits into small plates, and its young twigs are densely hairy and tinged with maroon. The leaves are 1 to 3 inches long, dark green above and pale beneath.

Small white flowers open from April into June in clusters 1 to 2 inches across. Pale blue to whitish blue berries about a quarter inch across ripen in August and September, on stalks that turn maroon.

It is a larval host for the cecropia silkmoth and the spring azure butterfly. It grows wild in hammocks, on limestone and marl outcrops and at swamp edges, most commonly in northern Florida.

How to grow Toughleaf Dogwood

Toughleaf dogwood grows in part shade. It wants a limy or near-neutral soil, sandy or rocky, not an acid one. In the wild it grows both in well-drained woods and at swamp edges that flood briefly, and it takes short dry spells. Plant it 6 feet from a wall and set plants 6 feet apart for a screen. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper, and put the native soil back in. Sow it as its close relative roughleaf dogwood is sown. Clean the pulp off the stones and sow them outdoors in fall, a quarter to half an inch deep, and mulch the bed over winter. Some seedlings come up the next spring and the rest the spring after. Stored stones need 30 to 60 days warm and damp, then 30 to 60 days in the refrigerator, before a spring sowing.

Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short. It spreads by underground stems into a thicket. Invasive privets threaten it in the wild, so keep them out of its planting.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, so there are no male and female plants to pair. Bees, wasps, flies and butterflies visit the flowers, and birds and small mammals eat the berries.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (8)

Plan the planting