- Author: Ann Edahl
What do pollinators do?
Pollinators pollinate flowers by moving pollen from the anther (male part of a flower) to the stigma (female part of the flower), either on the same flower or a different flower. The pollinators are there to collect nectar or pollen from the flower for food. While they browse they disperse the pollen grains among the flowers, allowing the plant to reproduce.
Stone fruit, almonds, apples, squash, watermelon, and many other fruits and vegetables rely on bees for pollination. And pollinators can help self-pollinating vegetables such as tomatoes. Native bees pollinate a variety of native and non-native plants.
What can we do to help?
- Edging your vegetable bed with flowering annuals is both pleasing and beneficial. They look lovely and attract pollinators to your vegetables. (Allow your herbs to flower, rather than pinching back for increased production, to make them attractive to pollinators.)
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Create a dedicated pollinator garden. You might focus on a garden that attracts butterflies, or one that attracts native bees.
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While mulching provides many benefits, try to include areas of bare soil. This creates a more hospitable habitat for our ground-dwelling bees.
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Think about replacing an ornamental plant or even a section of your lawn with plants that attract pollinators.
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Plan for succession of blooms to provide food for the pollinators throughout the growing season. Annuals such as zinnias can be particularly useful because of their long bloom time.
Selection of pollinator magnets for Fresno County
Consider including some of the following plants in your landscape. This list is by no means exhaustive, but they have all worked in Fresno-area gardens.
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California native annuals, perennials and trees that are easy to incorporate into the urban garden include California poppy (Eschscholzia californica), hummingbird sage (Salvia spathacea), Cleveland sage (Salvia clevelandii), yarrow (Achillea spp. – there are both native and non-native yarrow), California lilac (Ceanothus ‘Ray Hartman' does particularly well in the garden), desert willow (Chilopsis linearis), manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp. which come in all sorts of sizes), and Western redbud (Cercis occidentalis)
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Perennial herbs, such as thyme (Thymus ssp.), oregano (Origanum vulgare), lavender (Lavandula spp.), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), winter savory (Satureja montana), dill (Anethum graveolens, an annual that reseeds), rue (Ruta graveolens), and scented geranium (Pelargonium) make a great addition, planted throughout the landscape or in a dedicated herb garden,
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Perennials: sages (Salvia spp.), lantana (Lantana camara), and butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) are just three of many non-native perennials that attract a variety of pollinators.
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Annuals: try easy-to-grow marigold, zinnia (Zinnia) and sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima),
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Trees: Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) is a bee magnet in the spring.
Read more:
Ponder, Frankie, Elkins, et al. 2013. How to Attract and Maintain Pollinators in Your Garden. ANR Publication 8498. University of California Agriculture & Natural Resources.
University of California Davis Arboretum and Public Gardens. 2018. Support Native Bees with These 10 Plants.
- Author: Pamela S Kan-Rice
Dear Colleagues,
We are excited to begin recruiting for the new academic positions announced by Vice President Humiston in May. As communicated, the new UCCE recruitments will be released in small batches over the next several months. To begin the process, we are asking academics to sign up for service on search committees for recruitments managed by UC ANR, which include 29 UCCE advisor positions and 13 UCCE specialist positions.
Please use this Qualtrics link to sign up for committee service. Please note that the survey also allows you to sign up as search committee chairs.
For information on the search committee process and committee duties, please review UC ANR search committee instructions.
We thank you for your consideration and service during these important upcoming recruitments.
Daniel Obrist
Vice Provost for Academic Personnel and Development
California became the first state in the nation to enact a universal school meal policy in 2022. A new study published in Nutrients explores the benefits and challenges California schools experienced during the first year of implementing the new policy, sharing results from surveys completed by 430 California school foodservice professionals in March 2023. Benefits included increased meal participation and revenues, reduced meal debt and stigma, and improved meal quality and staff salaries. Schools experienced challenges related to product and ingredient availability, staffing shortages, logistical issues with vendors and distributors, and increased administrative burden due to the end of federal waivers and return of families needing to complete school meal applications for federal reimbursement. Schools reported that state funding and increased federal school meal reimbursement rates were key factors that supported policy implementation. Findings can be used to inform other states and jurisdictions considering similar policies. The study was published online in June 2024 by lead author Monica Zuercher from the Nutrition Policy Institute, additional NPI researchers Dania Orta-Aleman, Christina Hecht, Ken Hecht, Lorrene Ritchie and Wendi Gosliner, and collaborators Juliana Cohen, Michele Polacsek and Anisha Patel. The research was funded by California General Fund Senate Bill 170, Senate Bill 154 and Senate Bill 101. Learn more about NPI's research on universal school meal programs in California and across the nation.
- Author: Michelle Davis
June is Pollinator Month, and Pollinator Week is June 17th – 23rd. Most people can name pollinators- bees, butterflies, moths, and birds- but they don't always remember bats. Bats pollinate at night, which may be why they don't always get credit for their work. We don't usually see them in action. Bats search for big white or pale, funnel or tube-shaped flowers with strong fruity fragrances. They carry the pollen from the blooms on their fur and faces. These nectar-filled flowers belong to more than 300 food-producing plants and a plethora of evening bloomers. Most of the food-bearing plants are grown in desert or tropical regions and include bananas, guavas,mangos, cacao, dates, and cashews, and around here include figs and peaches. Flowers include evening primrose,nicotiana, datura, yucca, and French marigolds. For more examples of moon garden flowers, visit the Carolee Shields White Flower Garden and Gazebo at UC Davis Arboretum located at the southwest end of the arboretum near the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. Not far from the moon garden is a bat box attached way up in a tree near the equestrian area.
If you drive across the Yolo Causeway at dusk on a summer night, or take in a Bat Talk and Walk with Corky Quirk, NorCal Bats founder, you may get to see a lot of these amazing mammals, when approximately 250,000 to 300,000 Mexican free-tailed bats stream from under the causeway, their summer home and the site where they come to give birth. Their diet includes armyworms, cutworms, moths, and other agricultural pests. They will soar two miles up to capture their prey and patrol up to 30 miles each night and eat about one-half their weight in pests each night. Pregnant and nursing bats can ingest their own weight in moths each night! One bat can consume 600 mosquitoes per hour. The area these bats, and also a lesser number of big brown and Yuma bats, cover is a fair amount of our country's sushi rice basket and also includes several fruit and nut orchards.
Bracken Cave Preserve near San Antonio, Texas has a spectacular show from March to October of 20,000,000 pregnant or nursing Mexican free-tailed bats creating what looks like a tornado on meteorology screens as they exit the cave at dusk to search for food for themselves and their pups. Each female bat gives birth to one pup usually in late June. That pup is born naked. Warmth is crucial for survival, so the pups are packed together as much as 400 pups per square foot. Mom recognizes her pup by its scent, vocalizations and by her own memory of where it is in the cave, and she returns to it several times during the day and a couple of times per night to nurse and feed it.
If you want to try to attract bats to your vegetation, the ideal bat house is made of rot-resistant, non-pressure-treated wood like white oak or cedar with 4 chambers inside, painted with oil-free, dark-colored paint on the inside, well-caulked on the outside to stop drafts and mounted 10-20 feet off the ground, ideally away from trees to keep predators out. The boards for the chambers should be roughened up first. This allows the bats to climb from the bottom of the house upward. Poles or buildings are better options for mounting. The bat house needs to get at least 6 hours of direct sun exposure every day to keep the young warm. (The sun-blasted asphalt on the Yolo Causeway is what keeps the bat babies incubated in the expansion joints under the bridge.) A water-source less than 200 feet from the bat house is preferred, but it doesn't have to be a lake or even a pond. A cattle trough filled with water will do. If you have ever hiked at Lagoon Valley near dusk during the summer, you might have seen bats zooming and dipping over the troughs on the hills grabbing a quick drink.
Bats are sometimes feared in our culture, but China and other Asian nations consider them good fortune. If you look closely at museum art from that part of the world, it is not unusual to find bat depictions. Bats make up nearly a quarter of all mammals on Earth, and they are amazing workers and pollinators, too!