This is a common shrub in southeast Pennsylvania. One of the native shrubs that is holding its own against the high deer population and some invasive Eurasian shrubs as Amur Honeysuckle and Multiflora Rose. Its native range is from southern Maine and a little of southeast Canada down into northern Georgia to east Oklahoma & Kansas & Nebraska to southern Minnesota to central Wisconsin to most of Michigan and back to all New York and New England, growing in bogs, swamps, bottomlands, along lakes and watercourses, and growing upland in flat areas of meadows and wood edges, not high on hills or slopes. It is one of a number of very similar dogwood shrub species of Redosier, Redtwig, Bloodtwig, Gray, and Roundleaf Dogwoods. Its leaves tend to be narrower than some other shrub dogwoods with the leaves being 2 to 4 inches long and bearing orange to purple-red fall color. Its twigs are green to reddish-purple and pith is brown, and the bark of stems is gray. It bears creamy flat-topped flower clusters to 2.5 inches wide in mid to late June. The abundant fruit is a bluish, often with white areas or it can be black, and it is loved by birds and small mammals. It is fast growing and adaptable to different kinds of soil. It is sold by a number of native plant nurseries, it but is not commonly sold by conventional nurseries or seen hardly at all in most yards.

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Honey bees get nectar and pollen from this plant.

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Native to eastern North America from Ontario and Quebec south to Arkansas and Georgia. It is also found in other parts of North America.

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