Digital Books for Weed Science Education.

Plant identification can be challenging and even intimidating for the inexperienced. Growers do not necessarily need to identify every weed in a field to be effective managers but should be able to identify the major weeds that are important to their operations and goals. At first glance, learning how to identify weeds can seem like a daunting task given the number and diversity of species, but it is not as difficult as it may seem. Generally, there is a specific group of weeds that tends to dominate disturbed habitats within any native landscape. These digital books were created to help people better understand the nature of the weeds they are trying to control, and plant identification is a key component of that understanding. These digital books provide a new way to use an old tool - visualization - in the world of weed identification. Plant descriptions contained herein include key identification characteristics, photos of many species at different stages of maturity, and 360-degree movies for most species. These books are not meant to be a compendium of all weedy plants in the U.S., but rather include a number of the most common Midwestern U.S. and central Europe weeds along with the basic intellectual tools that are necessary to successfully identify plants.