XID Services

March 2, 2010 > Great Bend, Kansas: 72nd Annual County Weed Directors Conference;

rold — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:20:32 +0000

An overview of the 1,200 Weeds of the United States and Adjacent Canada DVD was presented to the conference. Each of the 105 Kansas counties has received a copy of the DVD which contains 782 weeds found in Kansas (as compared to the 296 species found in Weeds of Nebraska and the Great Plains, the reference book most commonly used by the weed directors). The Flora ID Northwest database which contains all 2075 native and naturalized species for Kansas is also available.

February 17 & 18, 2010 > Lewiston and Orofino Idaho Weed Identification Classes for the Clearwater Cooperative Weed Management Area

rold — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:54:35 +0000

These courses were attended by over 120 people including county, state, and federal agency personnel as well as local land owners. They received an overview of the XID Weed Identification DVD as well as a two hour class on basic plant morphology. Potted specimens of many of the species on the Idaho noxious weed list were available for examination. Many of the participants also brought plants to class for identification (mostly the dried plants from the previous fall). These included Ceratocephala testiculata (bur buttercup), Navarretia intertexta (needle-leaf navarretia) and Rosa canina (dog rose).

February 9th, 2010 > Nebraska State Weed Directors Conference

rold — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:23:32 +0000

The Nebraska Conference was the first audience to see the newly released video tutorial for the 1,200 Weeds of the United States and Adjacent Canada, available at www.youtube.com/weedidentification/ After an introduction to the new interactive database a short course on plant morphology was held. Every one of the 93 Nebraska counties received a copy of the interactive DVD for plant identification to assist them with identifying unknown plants in the coming growing season. The 1,200 Weeds database contains 724 weeds found in Nebraska and the audience was also introduced to the Flora ID Northwest database for the identification of all 1835 native and naturalized plants reported in Nebraska.

February 2, 2010 > Tutorial for the 1,200 Weeds DVD now available on YouTube!

rold — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:03:21 +0000

While the printable tutorial and tutorial database are available on the DVD, we found that most users wouldn’t take the time to actually print and read the directions. This lead to the user missing many of the important functions of the program, and poorer program effectiveness. Therefore, a video version of the tutorial has been posted to http://www.youtube.com/weedidentification so the user can watch (rather than read) the directions. The video tutorial consists of 16 modules, each focused on a different program feature for easy reference.

January 20, 2010 > Invasive Plant Council of British Columbia, Vancouver Canada

rold — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:08:59 +0000

As a result of last years presentation of the XID System, Dr. Richard Old was invited to this years conference to present a lecture on “What is a Weed” and to conduct a hands-on workshop on basic plant morphology. The abstract of the lecture can be found on the IPCBC website following the conference.

The hands-on workshop was attended by more than 30 students and lasted a marathon six hours. Since there was little plant material available in the field this time of year, the students practiced their basic morphology skills on snapdragons, chrysanthemums, and lilies acquired from a local florist. The XID framework was used as a model for the class and to show how easily the plants could then be segregated from the other 1,000 plants in the XID database using only a few simple characteristics. This exercise was done in a group competitive format, with the winning group identifying their plant to species in only two characteristics.

January 15th, 2010 > Columbia Basin Producers Recertification Meeting, Moses Lake, Washington

rold — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:13:39 +0000

Dr. Richard Old presented an overview of the 1,200 Weeds of North America and Adjacent Canada DVD and the XID weed identification system to the audience of over 200 agricultural fieldmen, producers, and agricultural chemical company representatives. The DVD contains 739 weed species found in Washington state, in comparison to the 299 species found in Washington which are included in Weeds of the West, the most commonly used reference book in this area. The audience was also introduced to the XID database produced by Flora ID Northwest, which contains all of the 3,408 native and naturalized species found in Washington.

Although currently specializing in weeds, Dr. Old was formerly the Bureau of Reclamation botanist for Columbia Basin Project and has extensively studied the native vegetation of the area as well as conducting surveys for the rare and endangered plant species found there.

September 26, 2009 > XID Weeds database presented to the Washington Master Gardeners

rold — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:45:19 +0000

The 1,200 Weeds of North America DVD was presented at the Washington State Master Gardeners conference in Pullman, Washington. Following the demonstration of the DVD, the class was moved to the field where the participants got a chance to practice their skills in analyzing the important characteristics of plants the found along the way.

Based on the following note received, the class was successful at least to some extent.

Thank you again for teaching the class last Saturday, I really enjoyed it, but more importantly, learned a lot more about good observation techniques for plant identification. You said in class that most people ignore plants, and I thought I was one of the few who tried to identify what I saw. However, when I returned to work on Monday, I drove by a stand of trees I drive by every day, and saw for the first time (or the 100th) the large vines starting to cover the smaller trees. I was even able to see the purple-blue berries without stopping. I didn’t know we had White bryony in Spokane, but there it was, right next to our property. I think we caught it early enough that we can remove all of them in that spot, but of course who knows how many seeds have been planted already. At least we know what to look for.

Thanks again for giving me (another) eye opening class on weeds.

Tim Kohlhauff

Plant Clinic Instructor

Spokane County Extension

21 Oct 2009 > Oregon Vegetation Management Conference, Seaside Oregon

rold — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:46:29 +0000

The 1,200 Weeds DVD was presented to the OVMA audience as well as a brief glimpse of the Flora ID Northwest XID database for all native and naturalized plants in Oregon, and the BONAP Synthesis of the North American Flora. Considering that the XID program followed a presentation by Dr. James Leary on killing plants with herbicide from a paintball gun fired from a helicopter, the world of weeds certainly seems to have gone hightech!!

January 22, 2009 > Invasive Plant Council of British Columbia, Vancouver Canada

rold — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:44:48 +0000

The XID program was presented to the IPCBC annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. While the 1,200 Weeds DVD was used to demonstrate the XID System, emphasis was given to the fact that an XID database (produced by Flora ID Northwest) exists for ALL native and naturalized species in British Columbia. The availability of a truly comprehensive interactive flora for the province provides a valuable opportunity to survey for newly invasive species rather than just those already recognized as a threat .

Interestingly, less than three weeks after the presentation, the following news was released: “Canada’s defenses against invasive plant species, plant pests and plant diseases have been found by its auditor general to be leaky at best, with a backlog of incomplete risk assessments and misplaced priorities. Fraser, in her report, said CFIA’s pest surveys “focus almost exclusively on known invaders rather than identifying potential new threats before they become established.”

XID databases from Flora ID Northwest databases are also available for the complete flora of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Therefore the groundwork for this early detection methodology has been laid for a large portion of Canada (as well as sixteen US states).

July 16, 2008 > 1,200 Weeds of the 48 States and Adjacent Canada DVD released

rold — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:44:14 +0000

The follow up to the highly successful 1,000 Weeds of North America CD has been released on interactive DVD. As well as the additional 200 weed species, the new version contains many more and larger images (over 6,000 total) and a new graphical user interface which allows the user to make their selections by clicking on the illustration of the structure rather than the term itself. Despite the improvements, the cost has remained the same ($49.95, about 4 cents per species) due to the emphasis by XID on providing the lay public with a user friendly method of detecting new weed species at a reasonable cost.