The drummond gray, also known as the swampy, or roughleaf dogwood was originally sold as the tree form of gray dogwood. It is actually a much larger and more robust plant than the gray dogwood. The white flowers on this dogwood do not have showy bracts but the flowers themselves are conspicuous. The flowers are followed then by a showy fruit that ranges in color from white to bluish on red pedicels. Fall color is a deep wine. Flowers, fruit, and fall color combine to give multi-season interest. This tree has a regular outline as a young plant. "The wood is close-grained and very hard, and has been used for bearings, shuttles, bobbins, tool handles, mallets, golf club heads, engravers' blocks, and for making charcoal."1
This plant's small size (25 feet) would allow it to be used under power lines and other similarly restricted spaces. One of its common names "Swampy Dogwood" is derived from the fact that it is well adapted to wet soils. However, it may not perform well in sidewalk cuts or small tree lawns that are subject to high wounding pressure and significant drought. The wound response is not known. Some suckering is to be expected but it will be less than could be expected for gray dogwood.
