Ah, spring! The dogwoods are in bloom. What a glorious time it is to be in Virginia.

Except for one thing.

The powers that be have decided to upend everything we once held dear deciding they can just change even the most basic facts willy-nilly simply to satisfy their own agendas. The General Assembly? Oh, heavens no. Were not talking about that. Were talking Congress. Not that Congress, though. This one: The International Botanical Congress.

See you didnt even know there was such a thing, did you? And yet this obscure body of unelected elitists has decided to reach out from its ivory tower and undermine the very foundations of Virginia law. OK, these are scientists botanists, to be precise so what some call elitism others might call merit and expertise. You could have been a scientist, too, if you hadnt sloughed off their science fair project back in seventh grade. And by ivory tower we really mean laboratories and the great outdoors. Anyway, never mind about all that. The point here is that International Botanical Congress has decided to reclassify a whole lot of plants and change their scientific names including, yes, our beloved state tree and state flower, the dogwood.

By state law, its the Cornus florida. But the International Botanical Congress without a single public opinion poll, without a single town hall meeting on CNN, without even so much as an appearance on Fox and Friends has unilaterally renamed it Benthamidia florida.

Does this mean we even have an official state tree and state flower anymore? Is this a loophole that some slick-talking lawyer backed by some well-heeled special interest group can use to make the case that we are now treeless and flowerless and we should elevate some other flora instead? Cry havoc and let slip the dog(wood)s of war!

Umm, no. So much for our alarmist warnings. Maybe we should save those for that other Congress in Washington. The International Botanical Congress actually made this change nine years ago at its 2011 meeting in Melbourne, Australia. Yes, were a little late in bringing you this breaking news. If you wanted on-the-spot coverage, please tell our corporate masters they should have approved our travel request. Your subscription price pays for reporters to watchdog city councils and school boards and the state Legislature but apparently doesnt cover junkets to Down Under for editorial writers who have a bur under their cushy, ergonomically appropriate chair. Yes, were outraged, too. Oh, that bur in question would be an Arctium minus.

But back to our main point: Why did the International Botanical Congress make what the National Center for Biotechnology Information calls sweeping changes to the way scientists name new plants, algae, and fungi? The short answer this will suffice for a family newspaper but not a term paper is that genetic testing has shown that some plants arent related to others the way we once thought they were. Remember when your cousin gave everyone in the family those 23andMe genetic tests for Christmas, and it turns out there were some family secrets that would have been better kept secret? Yeah, sort of like that, only with plants. Hey, we dont judge. But, by golly, the botanists sure do. At the 2011 convention in Melbourne, they reclassified a bunch of plants. This was not without controversy. The debate over the genus Acacia became known as the wattle wars a sometimes acrimonious dispute between American, African and Australian scientists over which continents species would still be considered Acacia when the genus was subdivided into five different ones. The Australians won. The website Scientific Gems tells us that Wikipedia ran a campaign against the official decision for several years yet another reason why you shouldnt be quoting Wikipedia in your homework.

Jordan Metzgar, curator of the Massey Herbarium at Virginia Tech, was at the Melbourne conference to present his research on boreal ferns. As for our beloved dogwood, he tells us what we want to hear: I believe Cornus florida is still appropriate to use.

How can that be? Heres how: Unlike the Congress in Washington, the International Botanical Congress doesnt pass actual laws. Instead it makes suggestions. Its all kind of decentralized, Metzgar says. Connecticut College published an official revision of which names it would use, adopting the new ones. However, many scientists still use the Cornus florida name when referring to dogwoods including the website Flora of Virginia and the Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora. If Connecticut wants to call the dogwood Benthamidia florida, well, just think of it the way the North and South called the same Civil War battle by different names. What was the Battle of Bull Run in the northern press was the Battle of Manassas in the South. Maybe someday the consensus will shift and well start using Benthamidia as the genus name for our flowering dogwood, but that day hasnt come yet, Metzgar says. To paraphrase other disputes, that will happen when you pry the dogwood out of our cold, dead fingers.

We Virginians love our dogwood, whatever the botanists call it in Latin. We have the Charlottesville Dogwood Festival and the Vinton Dogwood Festival (or at least did, just not this year). Richmond has an outdoor amphitheater called Dogwood Dell. One of our official state songs (yes, we now have more than one) name-checks dogwoods. Sweet Virginia Breeze by Steve Bassett and Robbin Thompson credits the Almighty Himself: Because he must have been thinking about me / when He planted that very first dogwood tree. We love dogwoods so much we make it do double duty as both our state flower and our state tree. The only other state to do this is Mississippi with the magnolia.

To be sure, others love the dogwood, too. Its also the state tree in Missouri, although we made it ours first, and Missouri doesnt love the dogwood enough to make it the state flower, as well. The hawthorn lobby is apparently strong there. Curiously, the dogwood is the state flower in North Carolina, but the pine is the state tree. See? We love you more.

Theres history behind the dogwood, too. The famous cherry trees that Japan gave the U.S. in 1912 that now bloom so brightly in Washington? The U.S. gave Japan 40 dogwoods in return. Alas, all but one died. Perhaps they were simply homesick. Thats what we think anyway. Thats our story, and were sticking to it. In Cornus florida we trust.

Read the rest here:
Their View: Cry havoc and let slip the dog(wood)s of war - Bristol Herald Courier

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