Is there anything special that I should know about Dogwood?

In my limited experience with dogwood, it is fairly hard, close grained, cuts
and sands well.I had trouble with cracking. BTW, I never realized that it got
that large-most trees that I've seen rarly exceed 8 inches or so in diameter:
is "dogwood" in the east and south different from that found on the west
coast??

Kip Powers
Rogers, AR