The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) Basic Training Academy graduated its second class of game wardens yesterday. The swearing in ceremony took place at the Holiday Inn Koger Center in Chesterfield County. Secretary of Natural Resources Preston Bryant was the keynote speaker at the ceremony. Board of Game and Inland Fisheries Chairman Sherry Smith Crumley and VDGIF Interim Director Gerald Massengill also spoke during the program. Clerk of the Circuit Court for Chesterfield County Judy L.
    Worthington officially swore in the new officers.
    The 19 new game wardens completed an intensive 34 week training program that included more than 200 courses. They will take up their assignments across the Commonwealth and proceed with field training under the direct supervision of field training officers. They will also undergo three weeks of boat operation training to be conducted on the James River and Rappahannock River.
    Game wardens must be proficient in a wide array of skills including handling of firearms, crime scene investigations, drug and operating under the influence enforcement, search and rescue, boat operation, etc. A Virginia game warden is vested to enforce all the laws of the Commonwealth and to uphold the statute and regulations that affect hunting, fishing, trapping and boating. VDGIF undertook establishing its own academy in order to tailor the program to the specific needs of game wardens. Previously, game warden recruits attended the Central Virginia Criminal Justice Academy in Lynchburg.
    The 2nd Basic Class of the VDGIF Training Academy consists of the following game wardens:

    An inquiry from member Bill Swarm to Virginia State Park Reservations led to this response: “There are no spring hunts in Virginia State Parks. Our hunts occur in Fall/Winter annually.

    Writer-naturalist Donald Peattie once wrote, “Lovely as it is, dogwood stoops also to be useful.”
    Long after the larger dogwoods in virgin forests disappeared, farmers continued to cut dogwood trees from fence rows and abandoned fields and sell them a few sticks at a time. The attribute of its wood that drew this much attention to dogwoods is that it is hard, strong, shock resistant and especially — wears smooth with use rather than splintering. This made the wood popular in the weaving trade when made into a device called a :shuttle.”
    Dogwood’s attributes have also made it useful for golf club heads, handles of chisels, mauls, mallets, wedges, yokes, small pulleys, sledge runners and a number of other specialty items. Dogwood is so important as an ornamental tree that the University of Tennessee maintains a Web site to disseminate information about it. The site was created by the University of Tennessee Dogwood Group, a consortium of scientists and educators who conduct research on dogwoods, develop new cultivars, and provide information based on their findings. Sponsors include the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station, the nursery industry, the International Society of Arboriculture and others. The site includes descriptions and photos of flowering dogwood and other dogwood species and cultivars, information about how to control diseases, answers to frequently asked questions and more. To visit the site, go to: http://dogwood.ag.utk.edu.
    For all the beauty of this tree, the common name of dogwood may come from something less lovely — “dagger.” This, in turn, may actually come from its early use as a skewer, or thin piece of wood used to hold meat together. The tendency of its wood to not splinter made it popular for this purpose
    The scientific genus name, Cornus, derives from the Latin, cornu, or horn, in reference to another use of its hard wood. The species name, florida, is also from Latin, flos, meaning flowers. Few dogwood trees even come close to the co-champions listed in American Forest’s National Register of Big Trees. Both trees are between 35 and 36 inches in diameter and just over 31 feet in height. One can be found in Glenwood Park, Norfolk, Virginia, and the other grows near Clinton, North Carolina.
. . . from The National Arbor Day Foundation’s Library of Trees: FLOWERING DOGWOOD.