Kousa dogwood

* Common name: Kousa dogwood

* Botanical name: Cornus kousa

* What it is: A small flowering tree with white or pink late-spring flowers, interesting mottled bark and warty, red-orange, marble-sized fruits in fall. There’s always something going on. More resistant to borers, leaf disease and clay soil than our native dogwood. Especially good varieties: ‘Greensleeves,’ ‘Moonbeam’ and ‘Milky Way.’

* Size: About 25 feet tall and 18 feet wide.

* Where to use: Nice specimen tree for smaller yards, especially front yards. Also works at a house corner if you plant it at least 9 or 10 feet out from the walls. Sun or part shade.

* Care: Prune out competing trunks and crossing branches to train when young, then remove lower limbs as tree grows. Keep consistently damp in first few years to help the roots establish. Once established, Kousa dogwoods should need no spraying, no supplemental fertilizer in average soil and watering only in droughts.

* Great partner: Liriope and Russian cypress make a nice underplanting.