When: Saturday, August 24, 2024 9:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Cost: $10
Location: Stanislaus County Ag Center, Modesto
Sign Up Link: https://ucanr.edu/totally/tomatoes/2024
Questions? (209) 525-6862
UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Instructor: Heidi Aufdermaur
If you'd prefer to pay by cash or check, you can send or drop payment by the office. Please sign up and pay by August 15 to reserve your space!
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Did you know that California has a state insect? It does.
Is it the honey bee? No.
Is it the lady beetle (ladybug)? No.
Bumble bee? No.
It's the California dogface butterfly (Zerene eurydice), an insect found only in California.
The state Legislature designated it as the state insect in 1972. The butterfly is nicknamed "dogface" in reference to the silhouette of what resembles a poodle head on the wings of the male. The female is mostly solid yellow except for a single black spot on its upper wings.
Most people have never seen it in the wild. But if you've visited the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis, home of a global collection of 8 million insect specimens, you know that its logo is the California dogface butterfly.
And on Thursday, Aug. 8 those attending the Vacaville Museum Guild's Annual Children's Party (sold out) will see specimens from the Bohart Museum, as well as macro images of the butterfly, the work of talented Bohart associate Greg Kareofelas of Davis.
Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator of the Bohart, has donated a drawer of the specimens for visitors to see. They can also pose in a cutout of the Bohart Museum's California dogface butterfly banner. And thumb through a 35-page children's book, "The Story of the Dogface Butterfly," written by UC Davis doctoral alumna Fran Keller, a professor at Folsom Lake College and a Bohart Museum research scientist. The book includes images by Kareofelas and Keller. Laine Bauer, then a UC Davis student, contributed the illustrations.
The book, published in 2013, tells the untold story of the California dogface butterfly, and how schoolchildren became involved in convincing the State Legislature to select the colorful butterfly as the state insect. Fourth grade students of Betty Harding and Shirley Klein, Dailey Elementary School, Fresno, advocated it as the state insect. The teachers and students enlisted the help of State Assemblyman Kenneth L. Maddy, who authored AB 1834. On July 28, 1972, Governor Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law, designating the California dogface butterfly the official "State Insect of California." (Read more on how the butterfly became the state insect under the Ronald Reagan administration.)
The most prevalent habitat of the California dogface butterfly is the 40-acre Shutamul Bear River Preserve near Auburn, on a Placer Land Trust conservation site; Kareofelas serves as a docent on the Placer Land Trust tours. (See virtual tour on YouTube). The butterfly is there because its larval host plant, false indigo (Amorpha californica), is there.
Are there dogface butterflies in Vacaville? Yes. The butterfly's breeding grounds include Gates Canyon. (See UC Davis emeritus professor Art Shapiro's website.)
As mentioned, few people see the butterfly in the wild. However, its image graces a first-class U.S. stamp and California driver licenses. It's also depicted on the California State Fair monorail.
Butterfly Poster and Book. The Vacaville Museum Guild's Children's Party (see what's on tap) also will spotlight a Bohart Museum poster by Kareofelas-Keller that depicts the male and female butterfly. (Both the poster and the book are available for sale in the Bohart gift shop; net proceeds benefit the insect museum's education, outreach and research programs.)
The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, also houses a petting zoo (featuring stick insects, Madagascar hissing cockroaches and tarantulas) and a insect-themed gift shop, stocked with books, posters, t-shirts, hoodies, jewelry and collecting equipment. Director of the insect museum is Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, Agricultural Sciences, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
The Bohart is open for walk-in visitors on Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 4:30 p.m. through Aug. 27. It will be closed to the public Sept. 1-22.
The next open house is set for 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 28. The theme is "Museum ABC's: Arthropods, Bohart and Collecting." All open houses are free and family friendly. Parking is also free. For more information, contact bmuseum@ucdavis.edu or access the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu.
Links:
- Golden Year for the California Dogface Butterfly (Bug Squad post, Feb. 4, 2022)
- Rob on the Road, KVIE, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) (First aired July 7, 2017)
- Capital Public Radio Piece on Dogface Butterfly (featuring Greg Kareofelas)
- Pacific Land Trust website (PLT maintains a conservation site in Auburn that's the home of the California dogface butterfly)
A 2024 article by Lela Nargi of The Guardian discussed the issue of potable water in schools and how inconsistent regulation can put children at risk for under-hydration or lead exposure. The article highlighted a 2022 study by NPI's Christina Hecht and collaborators and included quotes from Hecht, who described the development of legislation for drinking water in the federal child nutrition programs. In 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act made free potable drinking water a requirement during meal times at all US schools participating in the National School Lunch Program and childcare facilities participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program. However, states' varied implementation of the law plus a lack of funding for drinking water needs has left some schools with inadequate water sources or compromised quality. While a 2019 USDA survey of 1,257 schools indicated a 95% compliance rate with the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, experts including Christina Hecht, who coordinates the National Drinking Water Alliance with the Nutrition Policy Institute, highlight how this survey did not collect adequate data to determine whether safe and appealing drinking water was truly accessible. Lead contamination is a primary concern. Hecht and partners' 2022 study found 13% to 81% of 5,688 schools in seven states with available data had tap water with lead levels above 5 parts per billion (ppb). For comparison, FDA requires that bottled water have no more than 5 ppb of lead while the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a maximum of 1 ppb for school drinking water. States have varying requirements for lead testing of school and licensed childcare drinking water and, while federal funds for testing have been available since 2016 through an EPA-administered program, it was only with the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 that federal funds were allocated to assist schools with remediation of lead in tap water.
- Author: Ben A Faber
Each year the California Avocado Commission partners with Land IQ to produce a Statewide Avocado Acreage and Condition Analysis report utilizing digital satellite imagery, aerial photography and analytical tools to survey California avocado groves. This data helps the Commission make informed budgeting and marketing decisions and provides industry members with spatial data concerning crop type, location, condition and density. See the full 2023 Report HERE.
According to the report:
- In 2023 there were 52,534 planted avocado acres
- The majority of growing acreage is located in Ventura, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Riverside and San Luis Obispo Counties with a total of 50,818 planted acres
- The five top-producing counties reported 1,059 new/young acres and 3,399 topped/stumped acres
The report also provides acreage data by zip code, county, condition, year planted and density.
The California Avocado Commission's crop estimating team in conjunction with Land IQ uses the latest in remote sensing techniques to assess avocado acreage in production. As technology continues to advance refinements in our fourth generation of remote sensing techniques were applied to satellite imagery collected during spring and summer months. The imagery processing techniques include; segmentation into homogenous polygons, retention of tree crop polygons, calculation of average crop canopy moisture and vegetation indices, analysis of change maps from previous inventories, and classification of avocado groves into four categories; producing, topped/stumped, new/young, and abandoned. Aerial imagery (for a real-world view), and satellite imagery (for spectral and temporal data) are integrated into previously classified avocado acreage and analyzed for current condition of California avocado acreage statewide.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's nicknamed "the sunflower bee" for good reason.
It forages on sunflowers.
We recently spotted a longhorned bee, Svastra obliqua, also called "the sunflower bee," on Gaillardia, aka blanket flower, a member of the sunflower family, Asteracease.
Asteraceae is comprised of more than 32,000 known species of flowering plants. And Svastra? Fourteen different species occur in North America and seven in California, according to the UC Berkeley Urban Bee Lab, which provides this description:
"Overall they are medium to large, with stout bodies, gray hair on their thorax, and irregular striping on their abdomen. Females can be distinguished by their scopae, which are located on their hind legs. They additionally are larger compared to males and have dark faces. Males have yellow markings on the bottom section of their faces and are typically more elongate in body size. Both male and female bees have long antennae. Svastra sp. look very similar to Melissodes without using a microscope. However, Svastra sp. will have longer antennae than both Anthophora and Diadasia so the difference is more noticeable."
Those long antennae...those eyes...those mesmerizing eyes...
You can read more about California's native bees in California Bees and Blooms: a Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists, a book authored by the University of California team of Gordon Frankie, Robbin Thorp, Rollin Coville and Barbara Ertter. All are affiliated with UC Berkeley. Thorp, who received his doctorate in entomology from UC Berkeley, was a member of the UC Davis entomology faculty for 30 years, from 1964-1994. He achieved emeritus status in 1994 but continued his research, teaching and public service until a few weeks before his death on June 7, 2019.