Are you smarter than a landscape student? Part 1 of 3

Can you ID a weed the minute you pull up to a property? Can you rattle off both botanical and common names of annual, perennial and ornamental plants? And spell them correctly to boot? Whether you learned the technical side of the green industry from textbooks or on the fly in the early days of your business, at some point you learned to identify pests and plants out in the field. (Or maybe you hired someone who can!)

At the Professional Landcare Network’s Student Career Days event, which takes place every spring, green industry college students compete in ID competitions and other events like equipment operations and cost estimating.
We drew inspiration from these student competitions to create our “Are You Smarter Than a Landscape Student?” quizzes. This month: turf pest ID. In the months to come we’ll feature annual/perennials and woody ornamental plants. Let’s see how you fare.

For a printable PDF version, click here.

Click here to see the answers (Don't cheat!!)

IMAGE CREDITS: Bugwood.org: Robert Vidéki, Doronicum Kft.; Joseph M. DiTomaso, University of California - Davis; Robert Vidéki, Doronicum Kft.; Richard Old, XID Services, Inc.; Mary Ann Hansen, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; William M. Brown Jr.; North Carolina Forest Service Archive; Johnny N. Dell; David Cappaert, Michigan State University

Did you beat this year’s student winners in the
Turf & Turf Pest ID competition? They are:

North Carolina State University’s Matt Swaim:  92.50

The Ohio State University’s Corey Pangborn:  91.50

Cincinnati State Technical & Community College’s
Robert Emmitt:  89

University of Illinois – Champaign’s Joshua Skelton: 88.50

Mississippi State University’s Adam Slater: 83

So, are you smarter? Tell us and win!
E-mail your score to lleditors@gie.net by July 1 and be entered into a drawing to win a pest ID book from the Lawn & Landscape Store:
•  Destructive Turf Insects - 2nd Edition By Harry D. Niemczyk, Ph.D., David J. Shetlar, Ph.D.

For more information on this title and others, visit www.lawnandlandscape.com/store.