Guide Lines

The Maine Center for Invasive Aquatic Plants has just put out an updated version of the "Maine Field Guide to Invasive Aquatic Plants." It features a key, profiles of the state-listed aquatic invaders, and even a section devoted to similar-looking native species. It is incredibly detailed and very nicely put together, and would likely be an asset to anyone interested in invasive aquatics. You can download the entire 90-page guide for free here (pdf), or if you want a full-color, water-resistant print version, you can order one for $13 + shipping. They even take Paypal!

Wide Open Lab

I am pleased to announce that my post "Square Pegs" has been selected for the 2007 science blogging anthology "Open Laboratory 2007." It is an honor to be chosen as there are not only many fine posts that will be sharing the pages, but also many more fine posts that were submitted but did not make it in this year.

Book 'Em, Weedo!

There is a new online version of the Global Compendium of Weeds available, and it's a big improvement over the previous version. The old online GCW, though quite an amazing repository of information, was a mere sampling of the over 20,000 species of weedy plants listed in the hard copy. The new online GCW has been updated to feature over 28,000 plants, and best of all, has finally taken a big step towards taking advantage of some of the benefits electronic media can have over plain paper. In the old online version, each species page had a list of references by number, pointing you to a ginormous web page of references where you had to look each number up - very similar to the hard copy. The new version has the references listed directly on the species page, along with the classification given to the species by each reference (endearing terms like "casual alien," "garden thug" and the standard "agricultural weed").

Whereas most invasive species guides tend to be region specific, the Global Compendium of Weeds truly has worldwide coverage. It was surely a massive effort to bring the GCW to a second edition, and the ISW gives kudos to Rod Randall for providing free online access to this valuable resource.

Weekend Blog Blogging

The past week in invasive species posts, elsewhere in the blogosphere:

• Mapping the Marvellous has an interesting review of two recent invasive species-related art projects.
• I Can't Remember posts a review of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's book: Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants. Sounds like two enthusiastic thumbs up to me!

Plant Invader 600!

Plant Invader 600!
Originally uploaded by urtica

It's the Plant Invader 600! It slices, it dices, it identifies your invasive plant...if you live in Japan anyway.

When photographer Koichi Watanabe visited me last weekend for a tour of local Japanese knotweed sites, he brought along this book to show me an example of a Japanese guide to the weeds in their country. Now I want a copy...badly...even though I do not read Japanese.

Plant Invader 600 is everything you wish your local plant field guide could be: portable, flexible, sturdy, and full of over 1500 excellent glossy photos for 600 different species, including 300 images of seeds. The scientific names are in English, and there is a lot of Katakana in there as well, so I will be able to translate some of it on my own.

Luckily, I've managed to find it over at Amazon.jp. Shipping is going to be almost half the cost but it will totally be worth it, just to see all the American plants in there :-).
Update 7/16/07: I already received my copy, and it is truly awesome! Two thumbs up to DHL and to Amazon Japan, who has our American butts kicked in the minimalist packaging department (one extremely sturdy brown envelope, no box, no tape, and none of those stupid plastic air pillows).

World Weed Website

The website for the Global Compendium of Weeds has been updated with a new, improved search interface. For those of you not familiar with it, the GCW website, a joint effort of the USGS and the Western Australia Dept. of Agriculture, provides nomenclature, place of origin, and references documenting the weediness of hundreds of plant species. The online database is only a partial listing of the 20,000 species that will be included in the book version. It is unclear as to whether the website will be updated to include the complete species listing.

(Thanks to a member of the ALIENS-L listserver for posting info about the GCW website.)