Dogwood Festival

[Martha Shannon]

Okay, so it's here!
Anyone going?
My mom is a big fan - we took her there five years ago and she's hooked!
Now we are looking for something unique for our flower garden!
I'll be looking for fellow AMUGers!

[Richard Lyon]

So how are the Dogwoods in Atlanta?

While they are still real common up here, that fungus has hit them hard, and they aren't as common, nor as healthy as they used to be.

[Martha Shannon]

Oh they are beautiful!
I think it is one of my favorite trees!
I have about 12 on my property and one of the neighbors has a pink one!
Sorry to hear they aren't doing well in your neck of the woods!
I mainly go to the festival for the arts - to get ideas for stuff that I never end up making!

[Chris Waldrip]

While they are still real common up here, that fungus has hit them hard, and they aren't as common, nor as healthy as they used to be.

Where's "up here"? I don't see a map pin for you (hint, hint). :-)

[Richard Lyon]

Waleska Ga, north of Canton.

A fungus is doing a lot of damage to the U.S dogwood population. We used to have tons of full dogwood tree's throughout the woods up here. Now we still have quite a few, but the tree's are much weedier, and don't have the plethora of "blooms" (not exactly what they are, but close enough) that the healthy tree's used to have. Its dropped the visual impact down considerably.

Dogwoods are mainly shade tree's. Unless well cared for, they don't like direct sun. So the deep woods up here would be covered in white, once upon a time. However, fungus hit the deep wood dogwoods particularly hard, and mostly left the edge dogwoods which get lots of sun. Which, without lots of care from man, just don't look as good as deep woods dogwoods.

So, in short - the dogwoods aren't doing so hot up here. 

I'm glad to hear thats not the case with the Atlanta tree's.

[Terry Johnson]

Yeah, it's the Dogwood Anthracnose fungus that is wiping them out. It was introduced from Asia at some port on the Atlantic coast and is slowly spreading everywhere. It will eventually be like Dutch Elm disease, or that fungus that wiped out the American chestnut tree. Really sad.  I think they are working on developing Dogwood cultivars that are resistant to the fungus, but it will be a loooooong time before we have our beautiful dogwood forests back.