'Godwood Blooms'

Cornus florida — the flowering dogwood — earns its common names by blooming when nothing else has committed yet, when the woods are still technically winter-colored and the risk of a late frost is not off the table. Four white bracts opening like a cross, or a window, or a declaration. The flower at the center is actually tiny; the bracts are what we notice, what we always call the blooms, the tree’s magnificent misdirection.

The name Godwood comes from the old legend that the cross was made from dogwood and so the tree was cursed to flower in that shape ever after — the flower’s bracts tipped with brown as if scorched, the center greenish-pink as if still tender. It is a story about consequence and beauty arriving together. Against the deep emerald resin of the Musée Botanique oval, these blooms make that particular argument visible.

For the one who blooms anyway, every spring, without being asked.