Pesky Plant Trackers campaign
Greetings!

The second season of the Pesky Plant Trackers campaign has come to a close. Thank you for your important work of tracking phenology of these invasive plants! We hope that you will join us again next year - your reports of the same locations tracked in multiple years are critical to help researchers understand how these plants respond to climate conditions.

Did you enjoy participating in this campaign? If so, please invite a friend to join us next year!

Did you track a flowering wild parsnip plant this year? Make sure to mark your plant as "dead" in Nature's Notebook! Here is a video that shows you where to do this on your Observation Deck. Because wild parsnip populations often persist from year-to-year, you can return to your site in March or April to resume tracking! At that time, use your Observation Deck to add new plants.

Japanese and Bohemian knotweeds are perennial, so you can continue to track the same individual plant or patch for that species next year.

Want to stay connected with Pesky Plant Trackers this winter? Join UMN's Abbie Anderson for Tea Tuesdays! Abbie has a great line-up of guest speakers for upcoming Teas, including one next week on December 14th. Check out the full schedule and register here.
Winter can also be a great time to find patches of wild parsnip, Japanese knotweed, and Bohemian knotweed to track next spring. Learn how to spot dead and dormant plants in this great training resource from UNM. You can also explore reports on EDDMaps (see wild parsnip, Japanese knotweed, or Bohemian knotweed) or iNaturalist (see wild parsnip, Japanese knotweed, or Bohemian knotweed) as a guide for where to look for these plants in your area next spring.

Photo: Dead stems of knotweed can be easy to spot due to their rusty red color.
Credit: Abbie Anderson
What you reported on Pesky Plants this year
Collectively, you reported Japanese knotweed, Bohemian knotweed, and wild parsnip at 121 sites sites this year, a 200% increase over last year! We had 107 observers contribute data to the campaign this year on 344 plants or patches of plants, up from 31 observers tracking 49 plants or patches last year.

The map below shows the sites where observers reported on Bohemian knotweed (blue triangles), Japanese knotweed (yellow squares), and wild parsnip (red circles). The size of the icon indicates the number of records reported at that site.
The lines on the Activity Curves below show the proportion of "yes" records that you submitted for leaves, open flowers, and ripe fruits in wild parsnip this year. Generally, you reported a peak in leaves from May to July, a peak in open flowers in late June, and a peak in ripe fruits from July to August.
Japanese and Bohemian knotweed showed a similar pattern of activity to each other for leaves, open flowers, and ripe fruits this year. You reported a peak in leaves from May to October, a peak in open flowers in September, and a peak in ripe fruits from October to December.
Did you earn your Pesky Plant Trackers badge this year? You can earn this badge by observing wild parsnip, Japanese knotweed, or Bohemian knotweed once a week for six separate weeks in the same year. See it on your Observation Deck.

We hope you will join us again next year for the Pesky Plant Trackers campaign! Your reports submitted on the same plants for knotweed and at the same sites for wild parsnip over multiple years are extra valuable for helping us to understand how plants respond to climate conditions.

Thank you for your contributions to this important project!
Contact
Abbie Anderson
Program Coordinator
Pesky Plant Trackers
Erin Posthumus
Outreach Coordinator
520-621-1670