Identifying your local weeds can be relevant to everyone from home gardeners to landscapers, pest management specialists, allergy sufferers, and foragers of all kinds. In a Chats in the Stacks book talk presented at Mann Library, Antonio DiTommaso discusses “Weeds of the Northeast,” (Cornell University Press, 2023) co-authored with Joseph Neal, Richard Uva, and Joseph DiTomaso. Building on the best-selling original published in 1997, this 2nd edition has been fully updated and enhanced with detailed descriptions to aid in the identification of more than 500 common and economically important weeds in a region reaching as far south as North Carolina, as far north as Canada, and as far west as Wisconsin. Richly illustrated, the book is being hailed as a comprehensive yet handy and user-friendly reference for those aspects of weed biology and ecology which are most important to weed management.Dr. Toni DiTommaso is a Professor of Weed Science and Chair of the Soil and Crop Sciences Section in the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University. Since joining the Cornell faculty in 1999, he has investigated the biology, ecology, and management of important agricultural weeds and introduced invasive plants of natural and semi-natural areas in the northeastern U.S. and southern Canada. Most recently, his work has focused on the impact of climate change on the ecology and range expansion of weedy and invasive species and on crop-weed interactions. Since 2015 he has served as Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal “Invasive Plant Science and Management.” In 2022, the book he co-authored, “Manage Weeds on Your Farm: A Guide to Ecological Strategies,” was recognized with a silver award by the Association for Communication Excellence, a national network of communications professionals and educators dedicated to advancing the cause of effective science communication.
