Instructions for Ranking Plants with the At-Risk Assessment Tool
Please fill out a separate cover sheet for each species you rank.
Please rank each species separately, even when two species share a common or trade name..
Choose the category that best fits the plant and place the value for that category in the “score” column.
Write the specific knowledge you have of the plant in the “knowledge and source” column.
E.g. you know a plant to live at least 20 years. For question 1 you choose the category “long lived perennial” and make the score as +12 and add to the knowledge column “20 year old plants common”.
Please write the source of your information in the “knowledge and source column”.
E.g. The best published population monitoring study shows that they usually don’t flower until the 5th to 7th year, but I have seen them flower in the garden the third season. For question 1.1 one would choose “5 or more” and thus enter “+2” in the score column. Then I would also write “average first reproduction at 5 to 7 (John Doe Study 1999) but seen at 3 in the garden (personal. experience).”
If 13,000 pounds (6.5 tons) of a plant are traded annually, one would choose the middle option for question 5, enter “+8” in the score column and add “6.5 tons (AHRA 2004 Tonnage survey)
If you have insufficient information to answer a modifying question, please write “U” (for “unknown”) in the score column. It will be added as if it is a zero, but the U will alert us that we need to look for that piece of information elsewhere.