- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That would be the Luther Burbank Gold Ridge Experiment Farm in Sebastopol.
"Luther Burbank bought his 15-acre farm on Gold Ridge in 1885 in Sebastopol," says the Western Sonoma Historical Society on its website. "During his career he introduced over 800 varieties of fruits, flowers, vegetables, and grains. He developed many of California's plums and prunes, the ancestor of the Idaho Potato, the Shasta Daisy, and novelties such as Plumcots, Thornless Blackberry, and Spineless Cactus. His home in Santa Rosa was primarily a showplace, but he developed and grew thousands of new hybrids, cross breeds and selections at his Experiment Farm in Sebastopol."
Burbank (1849-1926), noted American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science and always the experimenter, was inducted into the Inventor's Hall of Fame in 1986.
So, what's the flurry of pink at the Gold Ridge Farm?
Naked ladies. The spectacular bulbous plant, Amaryllis belladonna.
The leafless plant (at least in summer, hence the name) looks like the Pepto Bismol of the plant world. It's native to the Cape Province, South Africa. The plant is named after the Greek beauty, Amaryllis. And "bella donna" means beautiful lady in Italian. "Botanically belladonna also means poisonous," according to CalCallas.com.
A recent tour of the Gold Ridge Experiment Farm found the amaryllis springing to life, as honey bees buzzed in and out. ("Amaryllis" is the name you call it when little children are around!)
The Gold Ridge Farm, located at 7781 Bodega Ave., Sebastopol, is a quiet place, a place for nature walks, a place of extraordinary beauty, and a place to contemplate what life must have been like in the 1800s and early 1900s. His cottage, renovated after the 1906 'quake, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
It's easy to see what influenced and inspired Luther Burbank, not just here on the Gold Ridge Experiment Farm, but at his Luther Burbank Home and Gardens in Santa Rosa.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A Sept. 7 article in Reuters, headlined "Monarchs in Western United States Risk Extinction, Scientists Say," indicated that "Monarch butterflies west of the Rocky Mountains are teetering on the edge of extinction, with the number wintering in California down more than 90 percent from the 1980s, researchers said in a study published on Thursday."
Reuters' reporter Laura Zuckerman wrote that "The migratory monarchs of the western United States have a 63 percent chance of extinction in 20 years and an 84 percent chance in 50 years if current trends continue, according to the study."
The scientists, led by Washington State University conservation biologist Cheryl Schultz, published their work in the journal Biological Conservation. It was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is weighing the prospect of offering federal protection for monarch butterflies through the Endangered Species Act. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is among those spearheading the effort.
Noted lepidopterist Arthur Shapiro, UC Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology who has studied butterflies, including the monarchs, for more than four decades, doubts that the western monarchs are teetering on the edge of extinction.
Shapiro, who maintains a website, Art's Butterfly World. says that yes, the western monarchs have been declining faster than the eastern monarchs, as per the Biological Conservation paper. However, during the drought, California populations appeared to rebound significantly, and it is not known whether the trend will persist, he says.
Their comprehensive and well-researched work, titled "Understanding a Migratory Species in a Changing World: Climatic Effects and Demographic Declines in the Western Monarch Revealed by Four Decades of Intensive Monitoring," was funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Their Oecologia abstract: "Migratory animals pose unique challenges for conservation biologists, and we have much to learn about how migratory species respond to drivers of global change. Research has cast doubt on the stability of the eastern monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) population in North America, but the western monarchs have not been as intensively examined. Using a Bayesia hierarchial model, sightings of western monarchs over approximately 40 years were investigated using summer flight records from ten sites along an elevational transect in Northern California."
"Multiple weather variable were examined, including local and regional temperature and precipitation. Population trends from the ten focal sites and a subset of western overwintering sites were compared to summer and overwintering data from the eastern migration. Records showed western overwintering grounds and western breeding grounds had negative trends over time, with declines concentrated early in the breeding season, which were potentially more severe than in the eastern population."
"Temporal variation in the western monarch also appears to be largely independent of (uncorrelated with) the dynamics in the east. For our focal sits, warmer temperatures had positive effect during spring. These climatic associations add to our understanding of biotic-abiotic interactions in a migratory butterfly, but shifting climatic conditions do not explain the overall, long-term, negative population trajectory observed in our data."
In acknowledgments, Shapiro and his colleagues thanked the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and the North American Butterfly Association for the monarch counts and making the data publicly available.
Meanwhile, since late August, the western monarchs (Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Utah) have been winging their way to their overwintering spots to forested groves along coastal California.
And then, around February, they will head inland to start the process again.
It's an amazing phenomenon.
As I write this, four monarchs are gathering some flight fuel, nectaring from two M's: milkweed and Mexican sunflower in our little pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif., part of their migratory path to the coast. They flutter from flower to flower, seemingly unaware of the California scrub jay circling them and a photographer zeroing in on them. Or the rain about to fall.
Resources:
Monarch Conservation, Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
Xerces Society's Western Monarch Thanksgiving Activity Count
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
We have bright faces in our Vacaville, Calif., pollinator garden.
The bright faces are usually that of assorted bees and butterflies nectaring on members of the sunflower family: Mexican sunflower (Tithonia) and blanketflowers (Gaillardia).
But we did not expect to see this bright face: a banded garden spider, Argiope trifasciata. Bright face? Argiope is Latin for “with bright face” while trifasciata is Latin for “three-banded.”
The Argiope trifasciata spider is found throughout much of the United States and Canada. It's also in Central and South America, Australia, the Mediterranean region, Africa, Sri Lanka, the South Pacific Islands, and China, according to Spiders of North America, which informs us that scientists have identified a combined total of 4000 spider species in the United States and Canada.
Argiope trifasciata is just one of them, but what a beautiful spider it is. Clever and cunning, too.
It had crafted a web inches from the ground between a showy milkweed, Asclepias speciosa, and bluebeard (Caryopteris clandonensis) amid patches of Mexican sunflower patch and African blue basil.
Exactly where the bees are.
It snared two of them one morning and wrapped them for later consumption.
Meanwhile, an opportunistic and hungry freeloader fly, family Milichiidae and maybe genus Desmometopa, figured the spider ought to share its prey. It stopped to feed on the wrapped bee.
So, in actuality, there were two bright faces in the garden--the banded garden spider and the freeloader fly.
The faces of the wrapped honey bees--not so much.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Just as all lady bugs aren't ladies, all widow skimmer dragonflies aren't female.
A mature male Libellula luctuosa, aka “Widow Skimmer," (as identified by Bohart Museum of Entomology associate and dragonfly expert Greg Kareofelas), recently delighted us with a visit to our Vacaville pollinator garden. He perched on a bamboo stake and appeared to be considering his fast-food menu--leafcutter bees, sweat bees, hover flies, mosquitoes. Hmm...decisions, decisions!
Mr. Widow Skimmer was probably not expecting the unexpected--a strong gust of wind flapped his wings over his head! Talk about having bad hair day...
What drew us to him--besides the wind!--was his steel blue coloring and his broad wing bands. Look closely and you can see his three pairs of black legs. They catch prey with their legs and then use their "fangs" to raise it to their mouth.
"The species name means sorrowful or mournful, perhaps because the wings of both male and female seem to be draped in mourning crepe," observes BugGuide.Net. They're "found across most of the United States except the Rocky Mountain region. The range continues southward across the Mexican border. The widow skimmer has been reported from four Canadian provinces: Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia."
How did Kareofelas know it was a mature male, recently mated? Well, when they reproduce, they form a wheel or heart shape (the process of reproduction is known as "in tandem"). Kareofelas saw the marks on the male's abdomen where the female clasped the male.
"Mature male," he said.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The event, "Exploring the Wonders of Insects," sponsored by the UC Davis Arboretum, is free and open to the public. Participants--all ages are invited--will gather at the UC Davis Arboretum Gazebo. Participants are encouraged to bring insect nets, if they have them. A limited number of nets will be available Sunday.
The tour is ADA accessible. Biking is encouraged, but parking is free on weekends in Visitor Parking Lot 55.
In their display, Hernandez and Cruz said they will be showing the "amazing diversity of insects from California, southern Arizona and more." They include Arizona moths and butterflies, beetles from Arizona, California moths and butterflies, and insects from Belize.
"Joel and I have one live female Dynastes beetle and a male and female Ox beetle that we brought back from Arizona that we're hoping to show the public that day as well," Cruz said.
Last year nearly 90 butterfly enthusiasts--from senior citizens to pre-schoolers--gathered for the Hernandez' tour, "Butterflies Up Close" at the UC Davis Arboretum. Butterflies sighted included monarch, gray hairstreak, Acmon blue, fiery skipper, dusky wing skipper, cabbage white, West Coast lady, gulf fritillary, pygmy blue, Western tiger swallowtail and buckeye.
Melissa Cruz, who works at the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden as the outreach and leadership program coordinator. received her bachelor of science degree in entomology from UC Davis in 2013 and her masters in educational leadership from Sacramento State University in 2017. As an undergraduate, Cruz worked with ecologist William Wetzel in researching the density distribution of a gall forming tephritid fly (Eutreta diana) on its host plant, mountain big sage (Artemisia tridentata subsp. vaseyana) and with entomologist Katharina Ullmann, now director of the UC Davis Student Farm Center, in monitoring native squash bees throughout Yolo County.
Cruz discovered a love for insects after her high school teacher gifted her with a pair of Madagascar-hissing cockroaches. She enjoys creating family programs at the Arboretum that focus on the diversity of insects. "I've also developed a love for scarabid beetles," she says.