Hi Folks! any of you had planted a Cornus angustata Empress of China  'Elsbry' PPAF ? It's true that it's disease resistance?I am going to plant this fall,it suppose to be evergreen dogwoods that I am fascinated to plant it in my fantasy garden...,I purchased it from Wayside Gardens.The problem is it seems like the said evergreen looks like no match with a cruel stages of shipping.One is looks Ok and the other one it's looks like a dried raisin from the top up to down the mid bottom parts of tree.I wrote an email and they said it is on dormant or shock stage and it will be soon recover after planting. But I think there's a very fine line between dormancy and dehydrated.Dormant plant take a slow process of changing and dropping leaves while dehydrated plants from extreme weather is being dried suddenly and never have much chance to store energy to go on dormant.Like a natural death has a big different between a causes of a sudden accident death. Anyhow I agreed to gave the plants a chance to be planted and monitor it until spring.My question is any of you had experienced planting a dehydrated dogwoods and survive in a harsh weather of fall and winter? Once I tried planting a cornus venus also from mail order source and it also dried up none of 3 of them never thrive and I end up wasting my 270 dollars for the price of 3.Now I replaced variety with the hope that this one will do much better but '' the said evergreen it's disappointed me the way I look at it is half way dying I can even make it a perfect everlasting tree.I think even it survive it might not gain a normal height and size due to it was deterred from grow.If the roots is alive I might get it grow by a sucker not from a main trunk. Now it still in a pot I placed it in my garage that received a sunlight but not directly,I leave it there for a few days to adjust the environment before planting.Any of you have any idea or suggestion about care after planting? or had experienced planting halfway dying dogwood and it survive? I knew my planting site is fine and the soil is good coz I've loaded it with many trucks load of top soil.I felt planting this trees is a crap shot but I'll just tried. I appreciated any comment or suggestion about this and thanks in advance!

I might not plant evergreen dogwoods in sun in a hot climate. Otherwise the soil conditions could be involved. I've seen brown tips on evergreen dogwoods here as well. They are often not the most thrifty and handsome of trees. Species delimitation within this subgenus is controversial. Over 15 new taxa have been published since the 1950s. This treatment follows Xiang (Bull. Bot. Res., Harbin 7(2): 33�"52. 1987), who recognized 13 subspecies among four species, i.e., Cornus capitata, C. hongkongensis, C. kousa, and C. multinervosa. However, a preliminary allozyme investigation by Dudley and Santamour (Phytologia 77: 425�"430. 1995) suggested that C. capitata subsp. capitata is quite divergent from C. capitata subsp. angustata. Thus, in the present treatment, we recognize C. elliptica as a species separate from C. capitata. Further studies are needed to test the various species delimitations in the group Here is a link that might be useful: 5. Cornus subg. Syncarpea (Nakai) Q. Y. Xiang, Acta Phytotax. Sin. 25: 128. 1987. This post was edited by bboy on Thu, May 9, 13 at 0:13

Dear Luv, Your situation is rather different from Jannabeen's situation. Janna's tree was likely suffering from transplant shock. Your tree was already established when it suddenly displayed these symptoms. If the tree was planted in an ideal location, if it was well watered, suffered no injuries from lawnmowering nor from fertilizing (root burns) - then you'd have to investigate whether the cause could be fungal or a pest. Flowering dogwoods are particularly susceptible to a hosts of diseases and pests and any of these things could kill your tree. Here's a link to an informative website. It provides both description of the diseases, symptoms and treatment. Having said all these, I am not experienced with dogwoods but I am considering adding a pagoda dogwood to my backyard landscaping. Good luck on your tree. http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/HGIC1010.htm Ianna

when I used to live in the twin cities, the common lingo used by designers and la types was that they carefully selected plants for your personal landscape based on soil preferences and adability to the area, ie, cold hardiness. And if course you can rhoddies in high pH, clay soil, in a wind tunnel. Ok, so the wind tunnels weren't that common, but my experience tells me that broad regions of the upper Midwest tend to the alkaline, and soils can vary widely over even small distances. When I lived in mn, I was constantly trying things I had no idea of how they'd grow. if you rely on only the known reliables in that weather, your idea of exotic is how many varieties of spire and nine bark can you grow? So i'd try different things. Korean arb? dead as toast before thanksgiving. Japanese Stone pine? still thriving without ever so much as the slightest winter burn almost 20 years later. Turkish filbert? one survived and thrives, one died after a couple years. You try those things that you dare. the risk is failure, the reward is something no one else has. of course, as you move into milder winters, what is defined as questionable becomes quite a bit different.