Inheritance of red foliage in flowering dogwood (Cornus florida L.)

Abstract

Flowering dogwood (Cornus florida L.) is an ornamental tree valued for its showy white, pink, or red spring bract display and red fall color. A “pseudo” F2 flowering dogwood population was recently developed from a honeybee mediated cross of ‘Cherokee Brave’ × ‘Appalachian Spring’. The foliage color of 94 “pseudo” F2 plants segregated into green- and red- leaved phenotypes and was visually rated for color on five spring dates over 3 years (2007–2009). Chi-square analyses of observed segregation of phenotypes indicated that a complementary gene interaction form of epistasis controls foliage color with a 9:7 two gene ratio. We propose the symbols rl1 and rl2 for the genes controlling this trait.