Are you smarter than a landscape student? Part 2 of 3

Can you rattle off both botanical and common names of annual, perennial and woody ornamental plants? And spell them correctly to boot? Whether you learned the technical side of the green industry from text books 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 PLANET’s Student Career Days event, which takes place every spring, green industry college students compete in ID competitions – and other events including equipment operations, cost estimating and more.
We drew inspiration from these student competitions to create our “Are you smarter than a landscape student?” quizzes. This month: woody plant ID. A special thank you goes out to Brickman and Mike Aschenbrenner, business development for the Northern Virginia region, for compiling these photos for us. Next month we’ll feature annuals and perennials. Let’s see how you fare. – Marisa Palmieri

Click here for a printable PDF version.

How it works:
A maximum of two students per school enter each ID competition at the PLANET event. They are required to identify a group of 50 turfgrasses, weeds, turf insects and turf diseases by botanical name (genus and species) and common name either from photographs or live samples. Students have one hour and 50 minutes to do so. A master list of specimens that could appear in the competition is posted on the website before the competition.
Each correct answer is worth a maximum of two points – a half point each for correct spelling, correct botanical name (genus, species and cultivar, if applicable) and common name.

Images: Michael Aschenbrenner

CLICK HERE FOR THE ANSWERS (DON'T CHEAT!)