Non sono fiori!

Friends of the Green Portal, today is a wonderful day because, as you can see, my cornus are fully in bloom. Every year I look forward to this period, which usually falls in early April. Depending on the year, it may be off by a few days, but generally, this situation occurs in the first decade of April. A truly very beautiful situation, as you can see the pink contrasting with the white, because this is somewhat the combination used when placing this plant in a garden. It's a small shrub or small tree, so it can easily reach heights of 6, 7, or 8 meters, but it has very limited, very discreet growth. A plant that particularly thrives in cold climates, thus capable of comfortably enduring temperatures as low as -15, even down to -20 degrees, although it does not tolerate prolonged, dry periods well. Indeed, this is a plant that suffered greatly in 2022, as a prolonged period occurred, and the following year, after this severe drought, like all plants, it focused more on survival than on flowering. But as you can see, he's recovered well; now we're in 2026, let's say he's almost in excellent shape. A peculiarity: the flowers, the ones we see and call flowers, are nothing but bracts, meaning modified leaves, because the actual flower is the one we see inside. There it is, visible there, somewhat like bougainvillea, like calla lily—what we call a flower is simply those brightly colored parts, which are actually modified leaves known as bracts. A plant that loves acidic soil, therefore absolutely unsuitable for neutral or even calcareous soils, so a pH of 5.5 is the maximum for this plant. A plant that, as we said earlier, requires attention to watering, especially when young, and providing fertile soil means fertilizing in order to achieve good flowering. It's logical that if instead we already have good soil, as I do in my garden, after a while we can forget about it; I don't perform this operation myself, but it's logical that it should be done especially if we have this plant in a pot. We can easily grow it in a pot; just be careful to protect it, perhaps from air currents, and give the plant a large pot, because it quickly consumes all the macro and micro elements present in the soil. The beauty of the cornus, as you can see, is that they can be planted in pairs, thus creating this wonderful contrast and clearly signaling that spring has arrived in our garden. If you enjoyed this video, as always, give it a thumbs up, share it widely, but most importantly, introduce the Portale del Verde to your friends and family. Hello, happy gardening!