AUSTIN FLOWER COMPANY

Pink Dogwoods are among America's favorite flowering trees. Pink Dogwood trees have flowers that are rose-pink, suffused with bright red appearing before the leaves, beautiful bright red berries and excellent fall color.The pink objects aren't petals. The petals will be visible in the tiny flowers in the center, when these flowers open. The pink objects are bracts, modified leaves.
Flowering dogwood is a small deciduous tree growing to 10 m (33 ft) high, often wider than it is tall when mature, with a trunk diameter of up to 30 cm (1 ft). A 10-year-old tree will stand about 5 m (16 ft) tall. The leaves are opposite, simple, oval with acute tips, 6–13 cm long and 4–6 cm broad, with an apparently entire margin (actually very finely toothed, under a lens); they turn a rich red-brown in fall.
The flowers are individually small and inconspicuous, with four greenish-yellow petals 4 mm long. Around 20 flowers are produced in a dense, rounded, umbel-shaped inflorescence, or flower-head, 1–2 cm in diameter. The flower-head is surrounded by four conspicuous large white, pink or red "petals" (actually bracts), each bract 3 cm long and 2.5 cm broad, rounded, and often with a distinct notch at the apex. The flowers are bisexual.While most of the wild trees have white bracts, some selected cultivars of this tree also have pink bracts, some even almost a true red. They typically flower in early April in the southern part of their range, to late April or early May in northern and high altitude areas. The similar Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa), native to Asia, flowers about a month later.The fruit is a cluster of two to ten drupes, each 10–15 mm long and about 8 mm wide, which ripen in the late summer and the early fall to a bright red, or occasionally yellow with a rosy blush.
Other old names now rarely used include American Dogwood, Florida Dogwood, Indian Arrowwood, Cornelian Tree, White Cornel, False Box, and False Boxwood. This species has in the past been used in the production of inks, scarlet dyes, and as a quinine substitute. The hard, dense wood has been used for products such as golf club heads, mallets, wooden rake teeth, tool handles, jeweler’s boxes and butcher’s blocks.

Il Cornus florida rubra e un piccolo albero dalla straordinaria fioritura rosa acceso. Foglie rosse in autunno. Dimensioni: altezza e larghezza circa 5 metri.Ha bellissime foglie larghe, che in autunno assumono un fantastico colore rosso scarlatto. A maggio si copre di fiori (in realta brattee) di colore bianco, che si trasformano poi in allegre bacche colorate. Nella varieta "Rubra", la fioritura si presenta in splendide tonalita di rosa e rosso.I veri fiori sono quelli gialli al centro.
Questo Cornus e un albero caduco originario del Nord America. Ha crescita lenta e si presenta come un alberello di taglia medio-piccola, con tronco abbastanza corto e chioma tondeggiante, ampia e molto ramificata; gli esemplari di molti anni possono raggiungere i 10 m di altezza. Le foglie sono verde brillante, cuoriformi, divengono rosse con l'arrivo dei freddi, prima di cadere. In primavera, contemporaneamente alle foglie, produce vistose infiorescenze, costituite da un piccolo mazzetto di fiorellini bianchi alla base del quale spiccano grandi brattee tondeggianti, di colore rosa o bianco, rosse nella varieta Atropurpurea; le infiorescenze rimangono a lungo sulla pianta, e vengono seguite da piccole capsule rossastre contenenti i semi.

The Sugarcraft Club I go to once a month meets in the community centre belonging St Peter's Church in the old part of my town. There has been a church on this site since Saxon times and inside the church they have complete records of all the vicars going back to the 1300s !
This weekend is the Church's annual Flower Festival and this is the stunningly beautiful Carpet of Flowers laid up the entire length of the aisle. The ladies responsible for the Church flowers have put this carpet together depicting St Peter and various signs and symbols of worship.

In addition to the beautiful flowers in the Church, the community centre puts on exhibitions by the various clubs and organisations who use the facilities during the year.

Our Sugarcraft Club had two exhibition tables of the club members' work and ..... please don't laugh ...... another member and myself have been demonstrating sugarcraft all day long! I am totally "cream crackered" (to use Cockney slang!) ...... I could never be a demonstrator ..... I can't talk and work at the same time! LOL Added to that it has been very hot and humid today so all the paste was sticky and uncooperative!

So I'm sorry if I've not visited you all today .... I'll try my best .... and I may not be around tomorrow as I shall be at the Christening !