Cornus nuttallii and Cornus florida (western or Pacific dogwood and the eastern or Florida dogwood)
The western and eastern dogwood trees are native to North America but they are grown in temperate gardens all over the world. Look in anyone's back garden and you'll see globalization in action - the United Nations of horticulture. I have flowers from six continents in my small corner of Planet Earth. Everybody seems to get along. The petty squabbles of human politics are left behind at the garden gate.
As you can see from the first photo, dogwood blooms are actually like a community of small flowers. For example, this pink eastern dogwood typically has 20 little flowers clustered in the middle. If you look closely. each tiny flower has it's own equally tiny petals. By surrounding this 'village' with larger petal-like bracts, the dogwood saves energy, maximizing it's reproductive potential with minimum effort.
Incidentally, the Pacific dogwood is the official provincial flower of British Columbia and the eastern dogwood is the state flower of Virginia, Missouri and North Carolina.
"Red roses are flowers of great symbolism in the Western universe. Symbol of Venus, the goddess of love, they carry a very strong meaning, normally linked to passion, beauty, consummation and, of course, love."