- Author: Thomas Getts
Recently I was a participant on an educational noxious weed tour in Sierra Valley. It is a beautiful mountain valley where most agricultural production is devoted to grazing and hay production. The tour was set up by the Plumas Weeds group, to show land managers and ranchers various noxious weeds which are invading Sierra Valley. We discussed identification, biology, and control options for a variety of weed species. One of the questions which was inevitably brought up for each species was: “How long is the soil seed life of this weed?” This question led to interesting conversations.
When we stopped to look at hoary cress (Lepidium Draba) we had a relatively optimistic conversation. Hoary cress is a B list...
- Author: Guy B Kyser
The Economist reports that Hungarian biologists have trained rabbits to preferentially eat common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), an invasive plant (and a native to North America).
- Author: Guy B Kyser
Saw a nice article about a gall fly soon to be released for control of Cape ivy. Our old friend Baldo from CDFA started work on this in 2001, so it's been a while coming. Cape ivy is our version of kudzu, at least along the coast.
- Author: Joseph DiTomaso
Through Sustainable Conservation and the California Horticultural Invasives Prevention (Cal-HIP) committee, the PlantRight campaign was founded in 2005. PlantRight has brought together leaders from the nursery industry, environmental groups, and academics. Its goal is to address the ongoing sale of invasive garden plants in California and to develop a strategy to remove these plants from retail sale, as well as to prevent new potentially invasive plants from being introduced. To accomplish this first objective, PlantRight teamed with the UC Master Gardener program in 2011 to survey over 225 retail nurseries throughout the state for 19 known invasive species originating from the industry. The...
- Author: Guy B Kyser
- Author: John Madsen
In summer 2015, USDA-ARS and UC Davis Dept of Plant Sciences set up a water hyacinth control study with California Department of Boating & Waterways. The goal of the study was to determine the best of several different surfactants to pair with an aquatic-use formulation of glyphosate.
Aquatic weed trials are tricky compared to terrestrial trials, because the test sites are three-dimensional and they move around. In addition, water hyacinth is free-floating. In order to establish secure test plots, we built floating 1-m2 quadrats out of PVC pipe, swim noodles, and construction fencing.
On 31 July, we anchored the quadrats in open water within a sunken island in the Sacramento delta. Quadrats were...