After about 9 months of development a concept of mine has finally borne fruit.
This week we rolled out the interactive, self-guided, online turfgrass identification tool, located at: http://www.agry.purdue.edu/turf/tool/index.html. Now you can probably identify the mystery grass in your lawn from the comfort of your own computer. If you still can’t identify it, you can always send a sample to Purdue’s Plant Pest and Diagnostic Lab. We realize that not all the grass or grass-like plants that occur in lawns and fine turf are included but this tool should cover 99% of them and in time other minor/niche species will be added.
Some of the features I would like to point out include 1.) The anatomy and morphology section which includes both a black and white diagram plus real color photos, 2.) The turfgrass identification section which walks you through the steps of identifying an unknown sample starting at “vernation”, Note: if you do not know a characteristic or cannot distinguish what it is just simply click “Next” until you find something you can distinguish. As you progress on the right hand side a “% species matching” should start to appear. 3.) For a few of the major species (Kentucky bluegrass, turf-type tall fescue and zoysiagrass) there are even 360o images which you can rotate, WOW! 4.) List of turfgrasses containing a search engine where you can simply type in bent, blue or rye and the names of matching species will pop up and you can click on their names to see more detailed information. Isn’t technology great!?!
As you can tell I/we are proud of this tool and I would like to openly thank Mr. Jason Shore (recent computer graphics technology graduate) for his programming expertise, and ability to make this product look so visually attractive, and Aaron Patton for many of the detailed images that were used. This tool will be “tweaked” throughout the year and if you have any meaningful suggestions to improve use, please direct those to me personally via email: cbigelow@purdue.edu