test 1-5 - Illinois Landscape Contractors Association

C L T F i e l d E x a m P r e p
(continued from page 37)
The use of reference materials is not
allowed. The list of plants will contain
both botanical Latin and common
names.
Dr. James Ethridge, department
chair of horticultural
sciences
at Joliet
Junior College
(JJC), is an
ILCA member
and chairman
of the education
portion of
the CLT
Committee.
Dr. Ethridge
has been at JJC
since 1983.
Prior to that, he
taught at the
University of
Illinois at
Champaign-
Urbana, where
he also
received his
Batchelor’s and
Master’s
degrees and
Ph.D.
Each state
that offers CLT
testing selects
the 150 most
commonly used
landscape
plants in their
state and, from those 150 plants, 30 are
selected for the Plant Identification test
question. A different 30 plants are
selected each time the test is given. In
Illinois, ILCA members are surveyed to
compile the list of 150 plants that form
the pool used in this test and Dr.
Ethridge is charged with selecting the
30 plants that will be used on any given
test day.
“There are six or seven categories of
plants, including trees, shrubs,
broadleaf evergreens, vines, grasses
and annuals and perennials,” Dr.
Ethridge explains. “I have to make
sure to include a representative sample
of plants from each group.” The most
common reason test applicants fail this
test question is that they aren’t familiar
with all the categories of plants, he
says. “If they work with a tree crew,
they may know trees but not annuals
and perennials,” he observes. “If they
are in a crew that installs bedding
plants, they may know annuals but not
woody plants. Some people fail half
the test for this reason.”
Another problem might be that the
test applicants are able to distinguish
between a maple and an oak or a pine,
but they aren’t able to tell one species
of maple from another. “If there are
two maples on the test and they get one
of those wrong, that means the other is
going to be wrong, too,” says Dr.
Ethridge. If
someone is
retaking the test,
he may ask to
see which questions
the applicant
missed on
the original test
so he can
include the
plants that were
wrongly identified
the first
time around.
On the other
hand, he says,
he might put
completely different
plants on
the retest. There
are 150 possibilities,
and every
time he gives
the test he’s
likely to pick a
different 30
plants.
“These are
real plants,” he
stresses. “No
slides, no pictures,
just real
plants either in the ground or landscape-size
plants in a container.
They’re in random order, not alphabetical.
Students in college have to spell
the Latin names right, but this test is
multiple choice with the Latin name
and common name spelled out.”
In other words, the test is pretty
easy for applicants who know their
plants —but if they don’t know the
plant material, it’s another story.
38 The Landscape Contractor
October 2008