Learning to identify weeds is a skill that takes some practice, but there’s lots of help available to help you develop an eye for weed ID.
Cornell has a Weed ID website that walks you through the traits needed to identify our agronomic and turf weeds.
The University of Iowa has a good basic introduction to weed science and ID presentation here.
The University of Wisconson has a good tool for identifying weeds as well.
The following pictoral guide to plant ID characters is in an article titled “Weed Identification Tools and Techniques“, by Mark Schonbeck of the Virginia Association of Biological Farming, which is provided on the eXtension website . All text and images were created by the Mark Schonbeck.
A basic illustrated glossary of plant identification jargon
Figure 3. Structures on a broadleaf weed or crop. Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.
Figure 6. Roots and other underground structures. Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.
Figure 4. Structures on a grass weed or crop. Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.
Figure 5. Broadleaf seedlings. Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.
Figure 7. Leaf shapes. Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.
Figure 8. (a) Leaf margins. (b) Leaf venation. Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.
Figure 10. Arrangement of leaves on stem. Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.
Figure 13. Inflorescences (arrangement of flowers in clusters). Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.
Figure 12. Types of flowers. Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.
Figure 11. Flower structures. Figure credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming.