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Almost the exact antithesis of the dogwood is the bloom of this tree; for, both starting green when first unfolded from the buds, the papaw's flowers advance through browns and yellows, dully mingled, to the deep vinous red of maturity. The dogwood's final banner of white is unfolded through its progress of greens, about the same time or a little later.
I can do no more than suggest to the imagination the combined effect of those fantastic rocks rising from the foaming torrent to the drifting, tinted clouds; buttresses and bastions of the ancient earth laid bare in the mysterious night of the inconceivable past, some black and gloomy as the walls of a feudal moat, others yellow like ochre; others, again, sun-bleached almost to whiteness, yet streaked with ruddy veins all flashed here and there with burning oak and maple, or sprinkled with the purple blood of the dogwood's dying leaves.
The dark, rich reds of the oaks, the deep yellow of the beeches, the dogwood's and maple's gorgeous variations and the sweet-gums blood red mingled in a bewildering confusion of color.
The dogwood's horizontal branching habit makes every scrap of its lovely white blooms effective to the beholder on the ground below, but far more striking if one may see it from above, as looking down a hillside.
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