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.