Stats

Lifespan: Perennial
Size: Small
Diet: Photosynthetic
Biome: Boreal forest
Range: Northern Hemisphere
Movement: Sessile
Breeding: Runners
Defense: Camouflage
Status: Common

About

A creeping boreal perennial that carpets the forest floor with whorls of leaves and white four-petalled blooms, then ripens clusters of bright red berries by late summer. Its flowers snap open in under half a millisecond — one of the fastest pollen-launch mechanisms in the plant kingdom.

Life cycle

1.
seed
A dormant seed waits for water and warmth before germinating.
2.
sprout
A first shoot emerges with cotyledon leaves and a tap root reaching down.
3.
sapling
A young plant grows true leaves and a stem or trunk, putting on height each season.
4.
mature
Fully grown, flowering or fruiting at adult size.

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Taxonomy

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Cornales
Family: Cornaceae
Genus: Cornus
Species: Cornus canadensis